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Quotes of the Day:
"Where success is concerned, people are not measured in inches, or pounds, or college degrees, or family back-ground; they are measured by the size of their thinking."
– David Schwartz
"A good soldier is not violent.
A good fighter is not angry.
A good winner is not vengeful.
A good employer is umble.
This is known as the Virtue of not striving.
This is known as the ability to deal with people.
This since ancient times has been known as the ultimate unity with heaven."
– Tao Te Ching
Chapter 68
Lao Tzu
"Why look for conspiracy when stupidity can explain so much."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1. Russia Covets This Ukraine Province Above All. These Maps and Charts Show Why.
2. Peace Talks in Ukraine All Lead to the Donbas
3. Why Haven’t Sanctions on Russia Stopped the War? The Money Is Still Flowing.
4. After dillydallying, Thailand proceeds with Chinese-built submarine
5. AI’s Big Leaps Are Slowing. That Could Be a Good Thing.
6. For peace in Ukraine, Russia needs 'security guarantees' too
7. Ukraine Will Not Be a Pawn
8. The New Economic Geography
9. The Key to Taiwan’s National Defense Lies Beyond Budget Figures
10. Why the Russia-India-China Reboot Won’t Last
11. China’s Political System Makes Consumption-led Growth Impossible
12. A man, a plan, an electoral sham in Myanmar
13. The Era of the Aircraft Carrier Is About to End
14. US VP Vance says Russia has made significant concessions toward Ukraine peace deal
15. Former CIA Director Petraeus says Putin is ‘the obstacle to peace’ in Ukraine
16. What Does China Want?
17. Renewed Presence, Rising Tensions: Trump’s South China Sea Policy Is Taking Shape
18. Here’s what Russia and Ukraine have demanded to end the war
1. Russia Covets This Ukraine Province Above All. These Maps and Charts Show Why.
Geography matters.
Please go to the link to view the graphics.
Especially this chart below:
Rates of advance for select combined-arms offensives, 1916–2025
https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/russia-covets-this-ukraine-province-above-all-these-maps-and-charts-show-why-2988b2a5?st=CUpVjc&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Russia Covets This Ukraine Province Above All. These Maps and Charts Show Why.
Putin wants to win territory in peace talks that he hasn’t managed to seize militarily
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By James Marson
Follow and Andrew Barnett
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Aug. 23, 2025 11:00 pm ET
Peace talks with President Trump have prompted international discussions around a key aim that has eluded Russia’s Vladimir Putin in more than a decade of war: full control of Ukraine’s industrial eastern province of Donetsk.
The Kremlin leader thinks he can make a hugely significant strategic gain at the negotiating table rather than on the battlefield, where it could take years and cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Taking the territory would make further advances easier by bypassing Ukraine’s main defensive line.
These five maps and charts show why Putin is eager to get his hands on the land.
Donetsk region
Russian forces
UKRAINE
Severodonetsk
Slovyansk
Kramatorsk
Bakhmut
Luhansk
Chasiv Yar
Pavlohrad
LUHANSK REGION
Dnipro
UKRAINE
Pokrovsk
Avdiivka
Donetsk
Shakhty
Zaporizhzhia
DONETSK REGION
RUSSIA
Rostov-on-Don
ZAPORIZHZHIA REGION
Mariupol
20 miles
20 km
Note: As of Aug. 19
Source: Institute for the Study of War and AEI's Critical Threats Project
Russia has failed to fully take any of the four provinces in southeastern Ukraine that it has sought to annex. While Russian forces control almost all of the easternmost Luhansk region, they still don’t hold around a quarter of the other three regions. U.K. military intelligence estimates that seizing all of them would take Russian forces a further 4.4 years of fighting and cost around 2 million casualties in killed and wounded troops—a cost Putin would like to avoid with talks.
Russia
UKRAINE
Percentage of Ukrainian regions occupied by Russia
AuG. 19, 2022
AuG. 19, 2023
99.9%
98.2%
Luhansk
59.5%
57.1%
Donetsk
72.3%
71.8%
Zaporizhzhia
92.1%
71.1%
Kherson
AuG. 19, 2024
AuG. 19, 2025
98.7%
99.6%
U.K. military intelligence estimates that, at the current pace, seizing all four regions would take 4.4 more years
76.5%
60.2%
73%
72.3%
71.8%
71.8%
Note: Occupied areas are estimates based on the Institute for the Study of War and AEI's Critical Threats Project assessments
Daniel Kiss/WSJ
If Ukraine were to hand over the rest of the Donetsk region to Russia, it would move the front line of the war beyond the fortified cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk that have served as military hubs for Ukraine since 2014. West of Donetsk, the land is much flatter, opening up a swath of territory on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River that the Kremlin could try to make a grab for by resuming its invasion.
Terrain of eastern Ukraine
RUSSIA
Kharkiv
Cherkasy
Russian forces
Kremenchuk (292 feet)
Slovyansk
Luhansk
Kramatorsk
215 miles
Dnipro
Donetsk (482 feet)
UKRAINE
Zaporizhzhia
Kherson
Sea of Azov
Black Sea
Donetsk
Elevation from Kremenchuk to Donetsk
Russian forces
600 feet
Kremenchuk
400
200
0
50
100
150
200
0 miles
Note: As of Aug. 19. Terrain not to scale.
Sources: Institute for the Study of War and AEI's Critical Threats Project (Russian forces); NASA (elevation)
Carl Churchill/WSJ
Russia has been advancing in eastern Ukraine for months, but the rate of progress has been glacial. Ukraine has successfully slowed down the Russian advance primarily using explosive drones to eliminate vehicles and infantry soldiers. As a result, Russia has been unable to make a breakthrough, and its advance in some areas, such as around the eastern city of Kupyansk, has been slower than the British and French advance at the Battle of the Somme in World War I.
Rates of advance for select combined-arms offensives, 1916–2025
Somme, WWI (July 1–Nov. 19, 1916)
France/Great Britain vs. Germany
262 feet per day
Belleau Wood, WWI (June 1–June 26, 1918)
U.S. vs. Germany
1,345
Leningrad, WWII (Jan. 12–Jan. 30, 1943)
Soviet Union vs. Germany
3,281
Kherson (Aug. 29–Nov. 11, 2022)
Ukraine vs. Russia
1,936
Robotyne (June 4–August 28, 2023)
Ukraine vs. Russia
Ukraine
war
295
Kupyansk (Nov. 13, 2024–April 23, 2025)
Russia vs. Ukraine
164
Source: Center for Strategic and International Studies
Russia’s wasteful style of warfare, which commits infantry troops to risky assaults in search of incremental advances, has caused heavy losses. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, has estimated that as many as a quarter of a million Russian soldiers have been killed in 3½ years of war. The Kremlin has had to offer huge bonuses to attract volunteers to bolster its army. Ukraine’s losses have been smaller, but its population is also much smaller, around a quarter of Russia’s, meaning it is also struggling for manpower.
Estimated number of soldiers killed in the Ukraine war
Russia
200,000–250,000
RANGE
Ukraine
60,000–100,000
Source: Center for Strategic and International Studies
Write to James Marson at james.marson@wsj.com and Andrew Barnett at andrew.barnett@wsj.com
2. Peace Talks in Ukraine All Lead to the Donbas
Peace Talks in Ukraine All Lead to the Donbas
The contested region is where Russia’s war in Ukraine began a decade ago. Scores of Ukrainian soldiers have died defending it. Would Ukraine give it up now?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/24/world/europe/russia-ukraine-donbas-peace-talks-putin-trump-zelensky.html
Ukrainian soldiers firing toward a Russian target in the Donetsk region this year. The Donbas, made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, has become the focus of territorial disputes between Ukraine and Russia.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
By Kim Barker and Constant Méheut
Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine
Aug. 24, 2025,
12:01 a.m. ET
For President Trump, the map of Ukraine on an easel in the Oval Office had an obvious message. Russia has taken a big chunk of territory in an eastern region known as the Donbas. That territory, shaded in red, was gone. Ukraine needed to make a deal to get peace, or it risked losing more.
For President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, the map, displayed at a meeting on Monday with the two presidents and European leaders, presented a far more complicated picture. This was not a business deal or a poker game. This was personal.
Away from the cameras, he told Mr. Trump that his grandfather had fought in World War II to free the cities of the Donbas from the Nazis. He could not just give it up.
On Wednesday, hours after he returned to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, Mr. Zelensky reiterated the point.
“There were many such families” who fought to free the Donbas, Mr. Zelensky told reporters. “Many fell and many were wounded. And I explained that this is a particularly painful moment in our history and a particularly painful part of life in Ukraine. It is not as simple as it may appear to some.”
It is not clear where exactly the recent flurry of diplomacy spearheaded by Mr. Trump to end the deadliest war in Europe since World War II will lead. But the Donbas — a mineral-rich territory that consists mainly of two regions, Donetsk and Luhansk — will be at the center of any negotiations.
Almost the size of West Virginia, the Donbas is where much of this war has been fought. Tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides have died there for the smallest of gains. Russia is now trying to seize the last 2,500 square miles of the Donbas still under Ukrainian control.
Image
Ukrainian soldiers on the outskirts of Kostiantynivka, Ukraine, in May.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has demanded that Ukraine give up all of the Donbas. His demand includes even the part run by Kyiv, where more than 200,000 Ukrainians live in cities like Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, places Mr. Zelensky’s grandfather fought to defend.
For years, Mr. Putin has tried to use the Donbas to manipulate the Ukrainian government. Before invading, he exploited a Russian-backed insurgency in the region as a wedge against Ukraine’s hopes to join Western organizations like NATO. And now, in the fourth year of this war, he wants to not just seize the Donbas, but to use it to politically torpedo Mr. Zelensky, analysts said.
Most Ukrainians still oppose ceding any territory to Russia, polls show, and the Ukrainian Constitution prohibits surrendering it. Mr. Zelensky faces the choice of either supporting something unpopular with Ukrainians or risking Mr. Trump’s ire.
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“It is a poison pill,” said Vadym Prystaiko, a former foreign affairs minister. “Ukraine will have to swallow it and then we’ll see how Ukraine will digest it.”
Mr. Zelensky has avoided questions from journalists about whether he would give up land, saying he could discuss this issue only with Mr. Putin, who has not yet agreed to meet him.
Image
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine meeting with President Trump and European leaders at the White House this month.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Former Ukrainian officials and political analysts said the only way Mr. Zelensky could convince Ukrainians to cede territory would be to deliver an American-backed security guarantee. That has eluded Ukraine since Mr. Trump ruled out NATO membership.
But the guarantee would have to be strong, with some mixture of European troops and U.S. air support, for example, that would deter Russia from future attacks.
Balazs Jarabik, a former political adviser for the European Union in Kyiv, said Ukraine may have reached a point where it could accept ceding territory “for a peace deal which brings Western security guarantees for Ukraine.” He added, “If in exchange, it should get rid of the Donbas, I think it would.”
Mr. Trump has framed these territorial concessions as “land swaps,” suggesting that Russia, which controls nearly 20 percent of Ukraine, might return some territory, possibly small slivers of land in northeastern Ukraine.
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The Trump administration believes “that these land swaps are really beneficial for Ukraine because they believe Donbas will fall soon, and then Ukraine will have no cards to negotiate further,” said Maksym Skrypchenko, the president of the Transatlantic Dialogue Center, a research group in Kyiv.
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Image
Buildings damaged last week in a Russian attack near Pokrovsk, Ukraine.Credit...Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times
Ukrainians see it differently, he added. Russia’s advance in the region has been slow over the past three years. Giving up the rest of the Donbas now would also mean handing over cities and fortifications that could help Russia begin a future invasion.
The Donbas used to be seen as a pro-Russian backwater. Many of the 6.7 million residents spoke only Russian and no Ukrainian, and nine out of 10 people voted for a pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, in 2010.
When pro-European protests forced Mr. Yanukovych to resign in early 2014, Russia reacted swiftly. First it seized the Crimean Peninsula. Then it fomented separatist movements which, with the help of Russian troops, seized a third of the Donbas in a low-scale conflict that foreshadowed the current war.
Ukraine’s government considered granting self-government to certain areas of the Donbas to settle the conflict after a peace accord negotiated in February 2015 in Belarus, although Mr. Putin wanted any autonomous Donbas to have veto power over Kyiv, especially over its hopes to join NATO.
“The point was to turn Ukraine into a country which could not exercise its full sovereignty, especially when it came to its foreign policy,” said Harry Nedelcu, a senior director at Rasmussen Global, a research organization.
Image
Members of the pro-Russian Vostok Battalion at a training ground in Donetsk in 2014.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
As negotiations dragged on, Mr. Zelensky, a political novice, ran for Ukrainian president in 2019 on the promise of bringing peace with Russia.
Mr. Zelensky won. Back then, he was open to the idea of a compromise and granting “special status” to the Donbas region. He thought he could make a deal to end the war at a peace summit in Paris with Mr. Putin in December 2019. But at home, he faced political pressure to avoid any deal that would relinquish Ukrainian control over the Donbas.
“It seemed like you could get along” with the Russians, said Ihor Novikov, a presidential adviser at the time, noting that Moscow had agreed to prisoner swaps and seemed interested in negotiating.
“As soon as that meeting in Paris happened, I think Zelensky was actually the first person to realize that you can’t make a deal with Russia,” he said. “And he did a U-turn in Paris, and it angered Putin.”
In February 2022, Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, chewing up cities in the Donbas and driving millions from their homes. Shocked by the invasion, Mr. Zelensky appeared to reconsider granting some form of autonomy to the Donbas.
“We can discuss and find a compromise on how these territories will live on,” he told ABC News a week into the invasion.
Image
A military billboard this month in Mariupol, a city in the Donetsk region now under Russian control.Credit...Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters
But after Ukrainian troops pushed back Russian forces, and after mass slaughters of Ukrainian civilians became public, his views changed again. He pushed for Ukraine to reclaim the Donbas, even the parts Russia had seized before the invasion.
Mr. Jarabik, now an analyst at R. Politik, a political analysis firm in Europe, said Ukraine then shifted from that position, embodied in the bloody battle to keep the city of Bakhmut. It began making slow retreats after long fights that forced Russia to lose many soldiers.
Ukraine was “essentially trading territory for Russian lives,” Mr. Jarabik said.
As Russia pushed on the battlefield, Mr. Zelensky for the first time last fall talked about the idea of temporarily ceding occupied territory to Russia in exchange for the security guarantee of joining NATO.
Mr. Trump jettisoned that idea.
But in a win for Mr. Zelensky, Mr. Trump said last week that the United States would participate in security guarantees for Ukraine. Marco Rubio, the U.S. secretary of state and national security adviser, is leading efforts to work out the details.
Whether Russia would accept such guarantees is the real question. Ukraine wants NATO-like protections, but Russia started the war in the Donbas a decade ago in part to block Kyiv’s path to NATO. Why would Russia allow serious security guarantees now?
“So basically, we’re back to square one,” said Mr. Nedelcu, the analyst from Rasmussen Global. He said unless a change were forced on Mr. Putin, “nothing will happen” with the peace talks in the near future. Instead, he added, “I see more fighting happening.”
Kim Barker is a Times reporter writing in-depth stories about the war in Ukraine.
Constant Méheut reports on the war in Ukraine, including battlefield developments, attacks on civilian centers and how the war is affecting its people.
See more on: Russia-Ukraine War, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelensky
3. Why Haven’t Sanctions on Russia Stopped the War? The Money Is Still Flowing.
Does this mean our sanctions regime is weakening? Are US economic sanctions losing effectiveness?
Why Haven’t Sanctions on Russia Stopped the War? The Money Is Still Flowing.
For decades, companies feared being on the wrong side of U.S. sanctions. That’s not always true anymore.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/24/business/russia-sanctions-ukraine-war.html
Vladimir V. Putin, the president of Russia, which has conducted hundreds of billions of dollars in cross-border trade despite sanctions.Credit...Pool photo by Evgenia Novozhenina
By Aaron Krolik
Aug. 24, 2025,
12:00 a.m. ET
What kind of power can the United States exert to punish other countries for their misdeeds? The answer, in the age of nuclear weapons, has been economic power. Impose sanctions and cut off access to the U.S. dollar, the thinking goes, and the excruciating economic pain will force a rogue country to play nice.
And yet Russia — by some measures the most sanctioned country on earth — shows little urgency to do what the United States and European nations want: End its war in Ukraine.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the United States has put more than 6,000 individuals and companies with ties to the Russian war effort on the official sanctions list. For these prohibitions to work, the financial institutions that move money across borders must screen transactions and cut off illicit activity. If they don’t, they could face steep penalties from the United States, including fines or exile to the sanctions list themselves.
Nonetheless, Russia has managed to conduct hundreds of billions of dollars in cross-border trade. One reason could be that the financial institutions necessary to facilitate that trade are not being found and punished.
A New York Times analysis found that eight of the 10 largest settlements for global sanctions violations since 2014, when sanctions were first imposed on Russia over its annexation of Crimea, were against financial institutions. But only two of those cases involved Russia: one against a venture capital firm that managed money for a Russian oligarch who was under sanctions and another against Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange. And Binance was not primarily fined for helping Russia; it had also greased the financial pathway for other countries facing sanctions, including Iran, North Korea, Syria and Cuba.
As for the more than 6,000 entities on the Russian sanctions list, most are individuals and small shell companies; fewer than 30 are large firms based outside of Russia, and only five of those are financial firms.
Bringing down the hammer on financial firms that are helping Russia’s war machine has become only more complicated as the war in Ukraine has progressed. Cut off from much of the Western world, Russia has forged deeper ties with India and China, large economies that provide an economic lifeline.
“There are many companies around the world that have violated secondary sanctions threats,” said Edward Fishman, a senior research scholar at Columbia University and a former Treasury Department official. But, he added, “do you really want to strain your relationship with the U.A.E. or China?”
If sanctions were placed on major Chinese banks, international trade would slow considerably. Many American companies would be unable to pay Chinese factories for goods or receive payments for their own exports. Supply chains for everything from electronics to pharmaceuticals could freeze up, sending prices soaring for American consumers. This calculus has made Chinese banks nearly “unsanctionable,” according to Martin Chorzempa, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
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“Sanctioning a large Chinese financial institution,” he said, “could lead to global financial instability.”
Exemptions and Evasions
There was a time when being on the sanctions list was like a financial death sentence. The list, a 3,000-page document on the Treasury Department’s website, dates back to the 1960s.
Not only are the entities barred from doing business with the United States, they cannot interact with banks that use U.S. dollars. Because the U.S. dollar is the currency most widely used for international transactions, that ban effectively cuts them off from the global financial system.
Twenty years ago, the Office of Foreign Asset Control mostly dealt with small-time violators, handing out fines that averaged a few thousand dollars for offenses like smuggling Cuban cigars, according to an analysis of government records.
But then America’s sanctions program grew from a niche tool into a centerpiece of foreign policy. From 2002 to 2019, the average settlement grew 400-fold. Multibillion-dollar penalties against global financial institutions that facilitated sanctions evasion — even inadvertently — became normal. In 2014, the French bank BNP Paribas paid the U.S. nearly $9 billion for having processed transactions on behalf of Sudanese, Iranian and Cuban entities.
Few big penalties have been issued since 2019, however, when the United States fined Standard Chartered, a British bank, nearly $1 billion for violating anti-money-laundering regulations. Fearing enormous fines, global banks invested billions in compliance departments, which cut off suspicious transaction activity and severed ties with entire countries deemed too risky.
The sanctions list swelled in 2022 with the names of Russian oligarchs, yachts and private jets. Each update is instantly added to databases maintained by financial institutions worldwide, allowing them to block transactions.
The Office of Foreign Asset Control is good at finding nefarious shell companies and individuals and adding them to the sanctions list, said Kimberly Donovan, director of the economic statecraft initiative at the Atlantic Council and a Treasury Department official in the Biden administration. But bringing cases against large banks for violating those restrictions “is a lot more difficult,” she said. “Frankly it comes down to resources.”
This has been the case under Democratic and Republican administrations.
For decades, “you had a significant swath of humanity that was terrified of being on the wrong side of sanctions,” said Daniel Tannebaum, a former Treasury official who now leads anti-financial crime efforts at Oliver Wyman, a consulting firm. But, he added, “companies have short memories, and have forgotten some of the pain.”
A Treasury spokesman blamed the drop in sanctions enforcement on the Biden administration but offered no explanation for why it was not addressed in Trump’s first term, and gave no examples of how enforcement has shifted in President Trump’s second term.
The United States can investigate banks that are suspected of violating sanctions, a process that can take years to complete. Such cases may end in steep fines, but the far greater threat is the Treasury’s power to cut a bank off from the dollar.
Sanctions were imposed on Russia’s VTB Bank in February 2022, and it was kicked off the interbank payment system called SWIFT. SWIFT is the global messaging network that enables banks worldwide to communicate and process international money transfers, and without access, VTB should have been isolated from global finance.
However, the bank, which has expanded its China presence in recent years, seems to have found at least one workaround: It advertised that account holders could transfer up to 1 million rubles, or roughly $10,000, daily into their accounts on Alipay, a giant Chinese payment platform. VTB said there would be “instant enrollment” and funds available within one business day.
This could create a back door into the global financial system. Russian customers move rubles from VTB to Alipay and, once in Alipay, those funds can flow anywhere internationally, effectively washing the rubles into the broader economy and neutralizing a major Western sanction.
Ant Group, the owner of Alipay, denied that it had any ties to VTB. After The Times sought comment from Ant and VTB, references to Alipay disappeared from VTB’s website, which now tells customers that they can transfer money to “popular Chinese wallets.” VTB did not respond to multiple requests for comment, and did not address questions about whether the bank relies on Chinese intermediaries to facilitate the transfers to Alipay.
In his final weeks in office, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. did target some payment channels between China and Russia, putting nine Chinese companies involved in facilitating transactions on the sanctions list. But these were mostly shell companies and small trading houses — not payment giants like Alipay.
Business as Usual
Image
Despite sanctions, Allchips appeared at a Moscow trade show in April.Credit...Expo Electronica
In Moscow this past April, business was humming along. Photos from Expo Electronica, a large electronics trade show featuring more than 600 companies, showed exhibition booths displaying advanced semiconductors, with LED screens advertising the exact chips the United States has tried to block from export to Russia. A Russian Ministry of Defense delegation, led by Vasily Elistratov, head of the Kremlin’s artificial intelligence development program, walked the convention floor chatting with vendors.
Among the exhibitors was Hong Kong-based Allchips, a semiconductor dealer that had been added to the U.S. sanctions list eight months earlier. Allchips sells components used in cruise missiles that Russia fires at Ukrainian cities.
When asked how the company accepts payment, an Allchips sales representative, whose contact information was listed on the company LinkedIn page, said via WhatsApp that the company accepted payment in dollars and Chinese renminbi through Alipay, or through bank transfer to the company’s VTB account.
Ant Group denied that Allchips was an Alipay customer when asked about the relationship. Allchips did not respond to follow up requests for information about how the company facilitated dollar transfers while under sanctions.
Image
At Expo Electronica, a massive electronics trade show in Moscow, LED screens advertised the exact semiconductor chips the United States has tried to block from export to Russia.Credit...Expo Electronica
In recent months, the European Union has placed sanctions on two regional Chinese banks for facilitating transactions with Russia.
But Europe lacks the financial leverage to enforce sanctions globally, said Maria Snegovaya, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They don’t really have a lot of mechanisms to make sure the sanctions are followed,” she said.
4. After dillydallying, Thailand proceeds with Chinese-built submarine
Excerpts:
In fact, Australian scholar Dr. Greg Raymond concluded that “the preponderance of evidence suggests that Thailand’s submarine procurement was not solely about capability, but also intertwined with geopolitics and diplomacy.”
Raymond found evidence that the Thai government “exerted pressure on the navy to select the Chinese submarines,” even though European and South Korean alternatives offered better performance.
After dillydallying, Thailand proceeds with Chinese-built submarine
Defense News · Gordon Arthur · August 20, 2025
CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — Once tempted to ditch its acquisition of a Chinese-built S26T diesel-electric submarine, Thailand has decided the project will now proceed.
The cause of the indecision was China’s failure to obtain German diesel engines for the submarine, and its proposal to substitute Chinese variants instead.
However, the Thai Cabinet approved a contract amendment on Aug. 5, which permits this project to recommence after it had remained dormant since 2021.
Bangkok ordered this solitary S26T submarine on May 5, 2017, although it had originally wanted three submarines until fiscal constraints scuppered this plan.
Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group subsequently laid the boat’s keel in Wuhan on Sept. 5, 2019.
Replacement engines
The Thai government had stipulated that the 2,600-ton boat must use German-manufactured MTU 396 diesel generator sets.
When Germany refused to supply these engines, China Shipbuilding & Offshore International Co (CSOC) then proposed to utilize equivalent Chinese-made CHD620 engines to resurrect the project.
Bangkok was reluctant to do so, however, over concerns about the quality and longevity of Chinese engines. The Royal Thai Navy — or RTN — next conducted a series of studies and stipulated that China must certify these CHD620V16H6 engines to assure their reliability.
After China bench-tested the engines for more than 6,000 hours, the RTN issued its conclusion.
“It demonstrates a quality comparable to the original engine,” the RTN stated, “in accordance with the performance limits specified in the agreement, and does not affect the submarine’s performance.”
Thailand’s S26T is based on the Type 039 Yuan class used by the People’s Liberation Army Navy, one of which is seen here. (Chinese MND)
Bangkok simultaneously requested compensation, with Beijing agreeing to assistance worth US$24.7 million. This includes China extending the warranty and maintenance support from two to eight years; providing future equipment and weapons; and giving support for submarine simulators.
It is unclear what weapons the RTN will receive, but the package presumably includes heavy torpedoes, sea mines and perhaps anti-ship missiles like the CM-708UNB.
Following August’s approval, China now has until December 2028 to finish the submarine. Originally slated to enter service in 2023, the vessel is currently 64% complete.
So far, Thailand has paid CSOC 7.7 billion baht, about US$237 million, across 10 instalments. Another 5.5 billion baht, or 37% of the submarine’s cost, remains outstanding.
Lessons learned
This saga raises several issues. First, there was contractual laxity on the part of both China and Thailand, which assumed there would be no issue obtaining MTU engines. This proved not to be the case.
Secondly, why did Germany block the export of these engines? Ostensibly it was because of a EU embargo imposed in late June 1989 in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre, with the German government confirming to Defense News that this 1989 declaration listed “an embargo on trade in arms with China.”
However, countries like France and Germany have not rigorously applied the embargo. For example, China has manufactured hundreds of Z-9 helicopters based on the Airbus Dauphin. Similarly, Chinese warships and submarines are commonly powered by German-derived engines.
“The Chinese and the Thais were in agreement, and then suddenly the Germans threw a spanner in that wheel, which is somewhat surprising,” said Siemon Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Wezeman noted the engines themselves “are not supersensitive,” and “similar MTU engines have been actually sold by Germany to China.”
However, he suggested Germany may have reevaluated its policy, and that dual-use items destined for China’s military are now being more strictly policed.
Wezeman even suggested the deeper problem Germany had might lie in the end user of the submarine being Thailand, rather than the builder being China.
Thailand has been under military rule since a 2014 coup, and Germany previously blocked the sale of engines for Ukrainian-built BTR-3E 8x8 armored vehicles to Thailand.
Thirdly, there is the important question of what engines Chinese submarines use. If China had to put the CHD620 through a qualification regime to satisfy Thailand, this indicates the People’s Liberation Army Navy has not been using these engines on its own Type 039 submarines. Whose engines, then, has it been using?
Defense News approached MTU numerous times for comment on the issue of selling engines to China for naval use, but the company failed to respond as of publication.
Wezeman said it becomes hazy to what extent China is producing or buying foreign engines.
“As far as we know, there’s still production going on in China of engines of originally French and German design,” he said. “Very often this is under an agreement which is very old.”
The Pakistan Navy has eight similar Chinese-designed Hangor-class submarines under construction as well. These will use the same CHD620V16H6 engines.
Thailand’s submarine purchase was emblematic of closer ties between its junta-led government and Beijing, as ties with the U.S. waned after the 2014 coup d’état.
In fact, Australian scholar Dr. Greg Raymond concluded that “the preponderance of evidence suggests that Thailand’s submarine procurement was not solely about capability, but also intertwined with geopolitics and diplomacy.”
Raymond found evidence that the Thai government “exerted pressure on the navy to select the Chinese submarines,” even though European and South Korean alternatives offered better performance.
About Gordon Arthur
Gordon Arthur is an Asia correspondent for Defense News. After a 20-year stint working in Hong Kong, he now resides in New Zealand. He has attended military exercises and defense exhibitions in about 20 countries around the Asia-Pacific region.
5. AI’s Big Leaps Are Slowing. That Could Be a Good Thing.
AI’s Big Leaps Are Slowing. That Could Be a Good Thing.
Large language models’ pace of improvement has moderated, but investors shouldn’t panic
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ais-big-leaps-are-slowing-that-could-be-a-good-thing-34c87619
By Asa Fitch
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Aug. 24, 2025 6:30 am ET
OpenAI boss Sam Altman said he thought investors had become overexcited about the technology. Photo: kim kyung-hoon/Reuters
Quick Summary
- The progress of advanced AI models seems to be decelerating after a period of rapid advancement and high expectations.View more
The advance of cutting-edge AI is showing signs of slowing. For many companies looking to harness the technology, that wouldn’t be a terrible thing.
Excitement about AI reached feverish levels at the end of 2022 with the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and has stayed red-hot since. A regular cadence of more impressive large language models from startups and big tech companies alike has kept the party going, lifting stocks—including shares of AI-chip giant Nvidia NVDA 1.72%increase; green up pointing triangle—to lofty heights.
Nearly three years later, it looks increasingly as though those models are plateauing.
This summer, Meta Platforms META 2.12%increase; green up pointing triangle delayed the rollout of the next iteration of its flagship AI model, called Llama 4 Behemoth, because engineers were struggling to significantly improve it.
The latest model from OpenAI, called GPT-5, was delayed, and when it did come out it didn’t measure up to the hype. Normally ebullient Chief Executive Sam Altman has sounded more like an AI realist recently, saying at a media dinner that he thought investors had become overexcited about the technology.
But if the leading AI tools indeed are losing steam, that wouldn’t be a huge problem for many of the companies trying to integrate AI into how they work. It might even be welcome.
Generative AI is already powerful and useful in business—for summarizing large texts, for example, and helping employees code or write emails. Other more mundane forms of AI that predated the language-model explosion have also become increasingly useful, for tasks such as processing invoices or giving recommendations on how to manage a fleet of vehicles.
Yet most businesses have barely scratched the surface with AI in its current form, let alone what it could become if it gets a lot better.
While some have been quick to deploy AI, many more have been slow. Corporate tech leaders worry about sensitive data being leaked through chatbot conversations. They are wary of trusting AI with critical decisions that affect finances, employees and customers.
The tendency of even the best AI models to occasionally hallucinate wrong answers widens the trust gap.
A recent MIT study found that companies were already mostly comfortable with off-the-shelf generative AI tools from OpenAI and Microsoft MSFT 0.59%increase; green up pointing triangle. But when it came to building custom AI software to streamline their operations—the kind of things ostensibly most likely to produce real business returns—the failure rate for pilot projects was 95%.
Corporate AI users “were overwhelmingly skeptical of custom or vendor-pitched AI tools, describing them as brittle, overengineered, or misaligned with actual workflows,” the study’s authors said.
AI won’t stand still even if the purveyors of its most advanced models run into a wall: People will look for novel ways to improve it, and they will likely work eventually. Somewhat paradoxically, the mere perception that AI is slowing might give companies more confidence to invest time and money in it, seeing it as less of a moving target.
And the corporate world clearly does need more time to figure it out. The work of adapting large-language models to be useful for everyday tasks remains in its infancy.
“If I want to increase the pace at which I innovate, if I want to reduce the safety stock of inventory I have, if I want to improve the way I connect with millions of consumers, you have to change a lot more than just, ‘Here’s a tool that a few of your workers can use,’” said Michael Chui, a senior fellow at the AI arm of McKinsey & Co. “All of that change is really hard.”
That difficulty—a thorny management challenge as much as a technical one—means corporate AI adoption will be a multidecade effort, Chui says.
That shouldn’t be entirely surprising. The internet transformed how people live and do business, but it took much longer than its enthusiastic early boosters would have predicted in the 1990s. For instance, it took a decade for U.S. home broadband to go from near zero penetration in 2000 to more than 60% of adults’ subscribing to it, according to figures from the Pew Research Center.
The AI boom is different in many ways, but it could follow a similar trajectory: a burst of enthusiasm followed by a leveling-off as it bleeds into society and business, with the true scope of the benefits only clear years later.
In the shorter term, the sense that AI’s rise might be less meteoric than previously thought has sent tech stocks on a bumpy ride. Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon.com, Meta and other AI leaders sold off last week before Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s comments pointing to an interest-rate cut sparked a Friday rally.
Ironically, though, that it is getting tougher to squeeze out better performance from AI models might result in an extension of the boom for some, especially “pick and shovel” makers such as Nvidia. Altman, Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and other big AI spenders likely will put yet more money behind their attempts to overcome recent challenges.
Altman recently suggested the cure to OpenAI’s recent stumbles was to spend trillions more dollars on AI chips. And even the process of adapting models to real-world business tasks will require more incremental computing power.
Eventually, there is reason to suspect that the big winners from today’s AI boom won’t prosper quite as much, should the pace of AI innovation moderate.
But it isn’t just Big Tech that stands to gain from AI: The payday for all the companies starting to leverage it will come—it might just take longer.
Write to Asa Fitch at asa.fitch@wsj.com
6. For peace in Ukraine, Russia needs 'security guarantees' too
Big, bad NATO is a threat. Poor little Russia. But I guess just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not out to get you.
Excerpts:
That is why NATO’s relentless expansion has always been a core security issue for Russia. Whatever else it may be, NATO remains, first and foremost, a military alliance, one that should now be preparing itself, according to the head of NATO's Military Committee for a “wartime scenario.”
NATO’s military function, accompanied by the longstanding exclusion of Russia from possible membership, even though it asked to be considered at least four times, makes its expansion a threat. And the same would hold true for any country whose security environment is so drastically altered.
Thus, when Putin says that a true peace settlement must address “the root causes” of the conflict, he is not just talking about specific grievances. He is also referring to the West’s deep-seated sense of moral supremacy that underlies them.
Understanding this is vital, because it means that there can be no true and lasting peace in Europe until multiple moralities learn to coexist. An important step in this direction would be having both Russia and Ukraine become part of a larger, pan-European security framework.
For peace in Ukraine, Russia needs 'security guarantees' too
For a true and lasting end to this conflict, the US and Europe need to think more broadly outside of just protecting Kyiv
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/ukraine-russia-security-guarantees/
Analysis | Europe
- Nicolai Petro
Aug 22, 2025
The failure of this week’s meeting in Washington to move the needle forward toward peace hinges, in my opinion, on the failure of the participants to properly understand the security dilemma they are facing.
Rather than seeking security for all, Europe is still seeking partial security, only for Ukraine. This short-sightedness stems from the desire to punish Russia, which argues that it is only defending its national interests.
It is telling that, toward the end of their joint press conference, Putin said he agreed with Trump’s claim that this war could have been prevented if Trump had been president. Many saw this as a throw-away line designed to ingratiate himself to Trump, but I believe that Putin was remarking on how different Trump’s approach to the conflict is from that of his predecessor. While Biden saw NATO as an unvarnished force for good; Trump appears to appreciate that it can also be seen as a threat, especially by those who have been excluded from it.
The arguments in favor of NATO expansion are all about the way the world “ought” to be. To understand why NATO can be seen as a threat, however, we must distinguish between what “ought” to be, and what “is.”
In the idealistic world of “how things ought to be,” NATO expansion is always benign because its members are democracies. Objecting to NATO expansion is therefore synonymous with objecting to the expansion of democracy. NATO thus becomes the Instrument of Democracy, seen as the summum bonum.
That is why NATO’s relentless expansion has always been a core security issue for Russia. Whatever else it may be, NATO remains, first and foremost, a military alliance, one that should now be preparing itself, according to the head of NATO's Military Committee for a “wartime scenario.”
NATO’s military function, accompanied by the longstanding exclusion of Russia from possible membership, even though it asked to be considered at least four times, makes its expansion a threat. And the same would hold true for any country whose security environment is so drastically altered.
Thus, when Putin says that a true peace settlement must address “the root causes” of the conflict, he is not just talking about specific grievances. He is also referring to the West’s deep-seated sense of moral supremacy that underlies them.
Understanding this is vital, because it means that there can be no true and lasting peace in Europe until multiple moralities learn to coexist. An important step in this direction would be having both Russia and Ukraine become part of a larger, pan-European security framework.
For Russia, this means that the West would have to give up the notion that security can be achieved by building up defenses against all its putative enemies, and instead embrace the idea that peace can only be achieved in partnership with its putative enemies, through dialogue. At times, the West has seemed to agree with this principle (in both the Istanbul Summit of 1999 and Astana Summit of 2010), but in practice it often reverts to coercion and brute force to achieve results that better suit its interests.
Such a dialogue was Mikhail Gorbachev’s ambition, even before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The decision, made by Bill Clinton in the early 1990s, to expand NATO while simultaneously excluding Russia from it, is the main reason the Cold War never truly ended, and has now erupted into war. At the time, Boris Yeltsin told Clinton that NATO expansion was not a problem, but “Russia has to be the first country to join NATO.”
The solution to this security dilemma is as obvious today as it was then — a pan-European security framework that embraces Russia and its neighbors, rather than excludes some of them. The reluctance of European leaders to discuss this openly suggests that they are still thinking of containing Russia, along the lines that John Foster Dulles envisioned in the 1950s.
They have forgotten that it was not rollback and liberation that led to the end of communism, but détente, rapprochement, and the Helsinki Process of the 1970s. Western leaders, however, only came to realize the need for coexistence after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Do we really need another such crisis today to remind us?
It may seem naïve to think about a European security framework that includes both Russia and Ukraine today. But if one wants to both end the war and secure a lasting peace for Europe, it is the only realistic option.
Nicolai Petro
Nicolai N. Petro is Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island, and the author of The Tragedy of Ukraine: What Classical Greek Tragedy Can Teach Us About Conflict Resolution (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2023). He is also a Senior Washington fellow at the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy.
7. Ukraine Will Not Be a Pawn
Excerpts:
The war, then, will likely rage on. Russia’s motivations have not changed, and it still has the strength to attack, although its widely advertised summer offensive did not produce significant gains. Ukraine still has the capacity to fight back, and it will not lay down its arms until it can be sure its independence is properly safeguarded.
Europe is helping the country by increasing military aid, although it must pick up the pace. But on the whole, the world is not yet giving Kyiv the support it needs to contemplate a deal. Diplomats can profess that they are making progress. Yet no statement, summit, or social media post can substitute for actually understanding Ukraine’s demands—and creating a strategy that meets them.
Ukraine Will Not Be a Pawn
Foreign Affairs · More by Dmytro Kuleba · August 22, 2025
Any Deal to End the War Must Respect the Country’s Independence
August 22, 2025
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, U.S. President Donald Trump, and French President Emmanuel Macron in Washington, D.C., August 2025 Alexander Drago / Reuters
DMYTRO KULEBA was Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine from 2020 to 2024.
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For almost everyone involved, the diplomacy around ending the war in Ukraine seems to be an exercise in faking it till they make it. Russian President Vladimir Putin is pretending he wants peace. U.S. President Donald Trump is riding along with him, pretending (or perhaps truly thinking) that Putin is sincere. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is pretending he believes Trump, as are leaders in Europe. The summits in Alaska and Washington reflected this, generating lots of noise without any breakthroughs. Call it the fog of diplomacy.
Still, it would be a mistake to say the gatherings accomplished nothing. In fact, every leader in attendance walked away with some sort of achievement. By traveling to Alaska, Putin placated Trump, who was growing exasperated with the Russian leader, and lived out his long-held fantasy of meeting with a U.S. president and carving up part of Europe. Trump, meanwhile, used the Alaska meeting to free himself from domestic pressure to impose harsh sanctions on Russian oil or to take other forceful measures. In Washington, Ukraine and Europe received promises that Trump would continue selling arms to Ukraine and demonstrated that they have seats at the negotiating table. Trump, for his part, reassured critics that he was not cutting a deal with Putin behind the backs of his NATO allies.
But although the summits mark a departure from Trump’s early strategy—when Ukraine and Europe received only sticks, and Russia only carrots—the president is mercurial. He has repeatedly expressed admiration for powerful dictatorships and endorsed the idea that, in international relations, strong countries should do as they like. Trump doesn’t even think he needs to listen to Putin, although Russia’s president also believes that the weak must submit to the will of the great. As the talks continue, Trump could flip back to threatening Kyiv and Europe.
But no matter how many times Putin and Trump speak, and no matter what they do, Ukrainians are strong enough to avoid having their future dictated to them. Kyiv is not opposed to a negotiated settlement, as Trump occasionally suggests. But unless it is abandoned by Europe and experiences a domestic collapse, Ukraine will not surrender. To become a great peacemaker, Trump will thus have to better understand what Kyiv requires before the country puts down its weapons.
SAFETY FIRST
After years of broken promises by Moscow, Kyiv is not going to sign on to a peace deal it does not think will last. Trump seems to comprehend at least this much and has thus expressed openness to playing a role in providing so-called security guarantees for Ukraine. He even hinted that Washington could help offer “NATO-like” protections for the state.
But when it comes to security guarantees, the devil is in the details. And there should be no delusions: the distance between NATO itself and “NATO-like” protections is vast. Today, at least, Ukraine’s partners are extremely unlikely to fight on behalf of Kyiv (as they would if a NATO country were attacked). All they can really provide, then, is more weapons, continuity of supply, and membership in the European Union. In other words, the best they can do is not deprive Ukraine of what it is already getting.
EU admission is particularly crucial, as it would make Ukraine a full-fledged member of the West. To arm Ukraine without bringing it into the EU would mean preserving Putin’s hope of one day dragging it back into his sphere of influence. Europe, of course, is mostly responsible for Kyiv’s accession. But Washington is also essential to the process. Trump may be the only person capable of swaying Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is friendly with Putin, to stop blocking the body from advancing Ukraine’s integration.
As part of any talks, Putin will try to prevent Ukraine from receiving meaningful security assurances. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, for instance, has already made the absurd demand that Russia be part of Ukraine’s security arrangements. To do so, he invoked the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which London, Moscow, and Washington all agreed to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and protect it from attacks in exchange for Kyiv giving up its nuclear weapons. Ukrainians will never accept a redux of that deal. Yet by putting forward this proposal, Moscow has given itself vast room for maneuver and endless discussions.
LAY OF THE LAND
The next issue facing negotiators is about the mechanics of stopping the conflict. At first, the U.S. proposed a temporary cease-fire. Ukraine and its European partners agreed. Putin, however, called for going straight to a permanent peace deal. The U.S. president is fascinated by the idea of a complete end to the war—a truly big and beautiful achievement—and so it is no surprise that, after meeting with Putin, he adopted Russia’s stance.
But Moscow’s proposal is a trap. Bringing the war to a full conclusion requires far more time and concessions than does arranging a cease-fire. More time, however, is exactly what Putin is after. Every week absorbed by choreography and communiqués is a week in which Russian forces seize more Ukrainian territory and kill more civilians. Continued talks would also stave off American decisions that could hurt the Kremlin—such as tougher secondary sanctions on Russian oil businesses.
Putin’s talk of addressing “the root causes of the conflict” is also a stalling tactic. The Kremlin likes to say the root cause is Ukraine’s aspiration to join NATO. But as Putin has made clear time and again, the real root cause is Ukraine’s very existence. “All of Ukraine is ours,” Putin said in June—a sentiment he has repeatedly expressed since the war began. To end the conflict, Putin will have to change his tune and accept Ukraine as a sovereign EU nation capable of defending itself. Trump will have to accept Ukraine’s right to sovereignty as an indispensable element of the deal, changing Moscow’s approach by using coercion and encouragement.
Putin is a master at creating grinding negotiations.
If Russia is willing to accept Ukraine’s independence, there are ways the two states can strike some sort of bargain. Consider, for example, the issue of the land Moscow demands. There is a workable interim approach to this seemingly intractable problem: leave its status in a gray zone that allows both sides to claim it as theirs. This kind of understanding has worked well elsewhere. Beijing and Taipei, for example, have avoided a war over Taiwan by both claiming they are the rightful government of all of China, which lets the former maintain that the island and the mainland remain one.
But they did not adopt this formulation on their own. It was introduced by U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. And it has endured for more than 50 years because the United States consistently strengthens Taiwan and compels China to postpone a final settlement. For a similar deal to work in eastern Europe, Washington would need to do the same with Ukraine and Russia, respectively.
Instead, Trump has regrettably adopted Putin’s talk of a “land swap” in which Ukraine would formally cede territory to the Kremlin. It is the equivalent of asking someone whose car and bicycle were just stolen to strike a deal with their robber in which the thief returns the bicycle if the victim agrees to give up on trying to recover the car. For Ukrainians, this is completely unacceptable, just as it would be for any other nation. It is against the country’s laws, and even if it weren’t, such an agreement would prompt mass domestic unrest, toppling whatever government signed it and throwing Ukraine into chaos. The sooner the phrase “land swap” is excluded from Trump’s vocabulary, the better for Washington’s peacemaking efforts.
WASTING TIME
In pursuit of a grand bargain, Trump has proposed a summit with both Putin and Zelensky. Such a meeting would be a significant event. It would not guarantee the end of the war, but it would be difficult for the two leaders to walk away without at least coming up with some sort of steps toward an agreement.
Zelensky is aware that a summit with Putin could help hasten a deal. As a result, he has endorsed direct talks with Putin since 2022. The Kremlin, however, has not signed on. When asked about Trump’s proposal, Putin’s aides have demurred, claiming that any summit with Zelensky would need to be “gradually” prepared. If Putin avoids a meeting under various pretexts, it will be yet more confirmation that he is merely stalling for time, holding Trump back from decisive action while driving a wedge between Trump and Europe’s leaders.
No one should be surprised by such an outcome. Russia’s president is a master at creating grinding negotiations. Even if fully launched, talks between Kyiv and Moscow could drag on forever. As a Soviet Cold War–era joke once put it: “There will be no war, but the struggle for peace will leave not a single stone standing.”
The war, then, will likely rage on. Russia’s motivations have not changed, and it still has the strength to attack, although its widely advertised summer offensive did not produce significant gains. Ukraine still has the capacity to fight back, and it will not lay down its arms until it can be sure its independence is properly safeguarded.
Europe is helping the country by increasing military aid, although it must pick up the pace. But on the whole, the world is not yet giving Kyiv the support it needs to contemplate a deal. Diplomats can profess that they are making progress. Yet no statement, summit, or social media post can substitute for actually understanding Ukraine’s demands—and creating a strategy that meets them.
Foreign Affairs · More by Dmytro Kuleba · August 22, 2025
8. The New Economic Geography
Ouch! I bet Joni Mitchell did not expect to read this conclusion.
Conclusion:
As the song goes, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. The Trump administration has paved paradise and put up a casino, with what will soon be an empty parking lot.
But the essence of the change is that the US no longer believes in the global public good.
Excerpts:
To understand these changes, many analysts and politicians focus on the degree to which supply chains and trade in manufactured goods are shifting between the United States and China. But that focus is too narrow. Asking whether the United States or China will remain central to the world’s economy—or looking primarily at trade balances—yields a dramatic underestimate of the scope and impact of Trump’s changed approach and how comprehensively the prior U.S. framework undergirded the economic decisions made by almost every state, financial institution, and company worldwide.
In essence, the global public goods that the United States provided after the end of World War II—among others, the ability to securely navigate the air and seas, the presumption that property is safe from expropriation, rules for international trade, and stable dollar assets in which to transact business and store money—can be thought of, in economic terms, as forms of insurance. The United States collected premiums from the countries that participated in the system it led in a variety of ways, including through its ability to set rules that made the U.S. economy the most attractive one to investors. In return, the societies that bought into the system were freed to expend much less effort on securing their economies against uncertainty, enabling them to pursue the commerce that helped them flourish.
The New Economic Geography
Foreign Affairs · More by Adam S. Posen · August 19, 2025
Who Profits in a Post-American World?
September/October 2025 Published on August 19, 2025
Ben Jones
ADAM S. POSEN is President of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
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The post-American world economy has arrived. U.S. President Donald Trump’s radical shift in economic approach has already begun to change norms, behaviors, and institutions globally. Like a major earthquake, it has given rise to new features in the landscape and rendered many existing economic structures unusable. This event was a political choice, not an inevitable natural disaster. But the changes that it is driving are here to stay. No guardrails will automatically restore the previous status quo.
To understand these changes, many analysts and politicians focus on the degree to which supply chains and trade in manufactured goods are shifting between the United States and China. But that focus is too narrow. Asking whether the United States or China will remain central to the world’s economy—or looking primarily at trade balances—yields a dramatic underestimate of the scope and impact of Trump’s changed approach and how comprehensively the prior U.S. framework undergirded the economic decisions made by almost every state, financial institution, and company worldwide.
In essence, the global public goods that the United States provided after the end of World War II—among others, the ability to securely navigate the air and seas, the presumption that property is safe from expropriation, rules for international trade, and stable dollar assets in which to transact business and store money—can be thought of, in economic terms, as forms of insurance. The United States collected premiums from the countries that participated in the system it led in a variety of ways, including through its ability to set rules that made the U.S. economy the most attractive one to investors. In return, the societies that bought into the system were freed to expend much less effort on securing their economies against uncertainty, enabling them to pursue the commerce that helped them flourish.
Some pressures had been building within this system before Trump’s ascent. But particularly in his second term, Trump has switched the United States’ role from global insurer to extractor of profit. Instead of the insurer securing its clients against external threats, under the new regime, the threat against which insurance is sold comes as much from the insurer as from the global environment. The Trump administration promises to spare clients from its own assaults for a higher price than before. Trump has threatened to block access to American markets on a broad scale; made the protections that come with military alliances explicitly dependent on the purchase of U.S. weapons, energy, and industrial products; required foreigners who want to operate businesses in the United States to make side payments to his personal priorities; and pressured Mexico, Vietnam, and other countries to drop Chinese industrial inputs or investment by Chinese companies. These acts are on a scale unprecedented in modern U.S. governance.
The United States’ withdrawal of its former insurance will fundamentally change the behavior of the country’s clients and its clients’ clients—and not in the ways that Trump hopes. China, the country whose behavior most U.S. officials want to change, will likely be the least affected, while the United States’ closest allies will be the most damaged. As other U.S. partners watch these reliant allies suffer, they will seek to self-insure instead, at great cost to them. Assets will become harder to save and investment abroad less appealing. As their exposure to global economic and security risks rises, governments will find that both foreign diversification and macroeconomic policy have become less effective tools for stabilizing their economies.
Some argue that Trump’s new posture will simply drive a potentially desirable realignment. In this view, although his program requires both governments and businesses to pay more for less, the world will ultimately accept its new normal, to the United States’ benefit. This is a delusion. In the world Trump’s program creates, everyone will suffer—not least the United States.
GANGSTER’S PARADISE
Imagine that you were fortunate enough to inherit a piece of land by the ocean. It always offered great views and beach access. But you only invested in building a grand house on the lot when a well-regulated, reliable company came along that offered sufficient home insurance. You had to pay a pretty penny for it, of course. But that company’s coverage also enabled the owners of nearby lots to build, inspiring the creation of a rewarding neighborhood with roads, water, cell towers, rising home values—and most crucially, the guarantee that if you continued to pay premiums insuring you against floods and hurricanes, any further investments you made in your property would be at low risk.
In essence, this is the economic situation in which much of the world operated for nearly 80 years. The United States recouped enormous benefits by acting as the world’s dominant insurance provider after World War II. By assuming this role, it also maintained some control over other countries’ economic and security policies without having to resort to harsh threats. In return, countries that participated in the system were shielded from various forms of risk. Washington’s military supremacy and the mechanisms of international order that it enforced allowed national borders to remain mostly settled; most economies could thrive without the threat of conquest. Between 1980 and 2020, incomes converged overall both between and within the states that took part.
Economic injustices persisted; at times, they were imposed by the United States. But broadly, this global insurance regime was a win-win for nearly everyone with regard to economic stability, innovation, and growth. Violence and warfare declined overall, and poorer states were better able to integrate their economies with higher-income markets that opened up to trade. This security may have rested on a communal illusion about how little military investment and action it would take to keep geopolitics stable. But that regime persisted for decades, in part because U.S. policymakers in both parties valued the system and in part because enough outside actors believed in it and benefited from it.
Now that sense of safety is gone. Imagine, again, your hypothetical beachfront house. Some threats to your property have started to increase: sea levels are rising, and hurricanes are becoming deadlier. Instead of simply raising your premium, however, your insurer—which you had long trusted and dutifully paid—suddenly begins to refuse your claims for damage unless you pay double your official rate and slip the insurer something extra under the table, too. Even if you do pay what is asked, the insurer then writes to say that it is tripling the price of your general premium for less comprehensive coverage. Alternative insurers are not available. Meanwhile, your taxes begin to rise, and your day-to-day public services become less reliable because of the demands that disaster response is placing on your community.
The United States profited handsomely from being an insurance provider.
Trump is not the only actor responsible for the breakdown of the economic regime that prevailed for 80 years. The list of contributing factors—the underlying threats not posed by your home insurer, in the beach house analogy—is long. The rise of China, and the United States’ response, played a part. So, too, did climate change, the advance of information technology, and the U.S. electorate’s understandable loss of trust in incumbent elites after the country’s interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, the 2008–9 global financial crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
But the Trump administration’s policies constitute a clear turning point. The president’s supporters sometimes portray these as a mere repricing of risk: the free world’s insurer is adjusting its fees and services to fit new realities and correct a previous tendency to underprice its offerings. This depiction is mistaken. The Trump administration has made clear that it wants the United States to operate a completely different kind of scheme, in which it weaponizes and maintains uncertainty in order to extract as much as it can for as little as possible in return.
Trump and his advisers would argue that this is simple reciprocity or fair treatment for countries that, in their view, exploited the United States for decades. Yet those countries never extracted anything that remotely matched what the United States received: dirt cheap long-term loans to the U.S. government; disproportionately massive foreign investment in American corporations and the U.S. workforce; a near-global adherence to U.S. technical and legal standards that advantaged U.S.-based producers; reliance on the U.S. financial system for the vast majority of global transactions and reserves; compliance with U.S. initiatives on sanctions; payments for garrisoning American troops; widespread dependence on the U.S. defense industry; and best of all, a sustained rise in the American standard of living. Not only did the United States profit handsomely from being an insurance provider that others valued, but its allies also ceded many important security-related decisions to Washington.
The great thing about providing insurance is that for years at a time, you don’t have to do or pay anything to collect your premiums. That is even truer for the form of economic insurance the United States provided globally than it is for a home insurance provider, because the very existence of the U.S. security guarantees reduced the real-world threats to policyholders. This reduced the claims paid out. But the Trump administration is jettisoning this profitable and steady business model in favor of one that reinforces the opposite cycle. Ever-fewer clients will become more at risk. Already, businesses, governments, and investors are fundamentally changing their practices to try to self-insure instead.
FIGHT OR FLIGHT
In truth, Trump’s approach will do the greatest damage to the economies that are most closely tied to the U.S. economy and took the previous rules of the game most for granted: Canada, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. Take Japan: it had bet on the United States long term, investing substantially in U.S.-located production for over 45 years and transferring its technological and managerial innovations along the way. It has placed a larger share of its people’s savings in U.S. Treasuries for longer than any other economy. Japan agreed to serve as the United States’ floating aircraft carrier on the frontline with China, and it garrisons U.S. troops in Okinawa despite growing domestic opposition. Japan supported the first Trump administration in the G-7 and the G-20, followed the Biden administration in adopting parallel sanctions against Russia after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and, since 2013, has increased its military spending substantially in line with U.S. policy priorities.
Until this year, what Japan got in return was reliable platinum-tier coverage. Japanese investors and businesses were able to take it for granted that they could sell products competitively in the U.S. market, get their savings in and out of U.S. Treasury bonds and other dollar-denominated assets as needed, and safely invest in production in the United States. Japan’s economic strategy heading into Trump’s second term was based on the assumption that this coverage would continue, if at a higher price: in 2023 and 2024, Japanese companies announced investment plans that emphasized their readiness to put even more capital into U.S. industries, including uncompetitive ones such as steel, and forgo some market share in China to coordinate with the United States.
The trade deal announced in mid-July between the United States and Japan has increased the price tag for Japan well beyond that and diminished Japan’s coverage. The 15 percent tariffs imposed on the country are ten times what they had been and affect autos and auto parts, steel, and other major Japanese industries. Japan committed to creating a fund that invests an additional 14 percent of the country’s GDP into the United States—its monies spent at Trump’s personal discretion—that will cede a share of any profits to the United States. This constitutes a huge downgrade in Japanese savers’ expected returns and control compared with their prior private-sector investments, which were not subjected to such arbitrary U.S. government oversight. Explicit provisions requiring Japan to buy U.S. aircraft, rice, and other agricultural products, as well as support Alaskan natural gas extraction, expose the country to new risks. Even if Japan delivers on the agreement, it will remain vulnerable to Trump’s potential decisions to unilaterally raise its premium and reduce its coverage even further. Meanwhile, Washington’s recent accommodations to China on the semiconductor trade further diminish the benefits for Japan of pursuing an alliance-based economic path.
U.S. allies will not accept a “rebalancing” imposed on them.
The Trump administration expected that its key allies would simply pay any price for U.S. protection. So far, Japan, Mexico, the Philippines, and the United Kingdom have followed an approach closest to the one that the Trump administration anticipated. In the near term, these countries have decided that their fates must lie with the United States, whatever the cost. But Trump underestimated the degree to which allies’ closeness to the United States would lead them to register Washington’s new stance as a shocking betrayal. The popularity of the United States has declined sharply: in the Pew Research Center’s spring 2025 survey on attitudes toward the United States, the proportion of Japanese citizens who viewed the country favorably had slid by 15 percentage points from a year earlier; the country’s favorability rating had plummeted by 20 points among Canadians and 32 points among Mexicans. This large and negative shift reflects the sense of disappointment that only those truly invested in a relationship can feel.
National security concerns, existing ties, and—in the case of Canada and Mexico—geographical proximity will limit the degree to which the United States’ closest allies can undo their economic dependence. Yet they have more room to do so than advocates of Trump’s economic approach appreciate. Canada has resisted Trump’s attempts to unilaterally revise the 2020 U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement and impose asymmetrically high tariffs on Canadian goods. Prime Minister Mark Carney and all of Canada’s provincial premiers announced in July that, to reduce the country’s dependence on the United States, they had agreed to limit their concessions to Trump’s escalating demands and actively pursue increased internal integration. Carney also vowed to expand trade with the EU and other entities.
Other close U.S. allies such as Australia and South Korea will probably decide that in the near term, they have no choice but to throw in their lot with the United States. Over time, however, allies may well tire of the declining benefits that appeasement yields and reorient their investments. Like Canada, they will try to expand their ties with China, the EU, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). But this reorientation will yield a worse outcome for all these economies. They relied economically on the United States for good reason; if substitute markets, investments, and products were just as valuable, they would have chosen those in the first place. In the absence of fairly priced U.S. insurance, the value proposition changes.
LEFT BEHIND
The seismic Trump shock has hit other major economic land masses, too. ASEAN and the EU were always less fully aligned with the United States on economic and security policy than the five most integrated allies were. The two blocs are diverse, with a variety of commercial specializations, advantages, and political orientations within their memberships. Yet they and their member states—particularly Germany, France, the Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden, and Vietnam—have also based their economic behavior on the insurance the United States previously provided. As a result, they came to play leading roles in U.S. supply chains and technology investment. Their governments and citizens poured money into the U.S. economy through foreign direct investment, purchases of Treasury bonds, and participation in the U.S. stock market. They agreed to join U.S. sanctions and export-control regimes, albeit less consistently, and directly supported the U.S. military.
Trump has now subjected these countries to massive tariffs and tariff threats as well as bilateral requests for specific accommodations and side payments, such as demands that they purchase more U.S. natural gas or transfer industrial production to the United States. These economic players have more choice in how much effort they want to devote toward maintaining ties with the United States. And they are shifting their behavior more rapidly, strengthening economic linkages with one another and with China. ASEAN and the EU both had greater commercial ties to China than to the United States to begin with; that gap is widening, not only because the Chinese economy is growing but also because the United States is limiting its exports to and imports from China and its investment there. Over the past decade, the share of Chinese inputs into European and Southeast Asian industrial supply chains rose steeply as the United States’ share fell.
It is not sustainable for the EU, and certainly not for ASEAN, to economically isolate China, and the gains from doing business with China will only increase as the United States leaves the scene. Commerce with China does not substitute for the insurance that the United States previously provided. But as the Trump regime makes the United States less competitive as a site for production and limits access to the U.S. market (shrinking that market’s growth potential), an expansion of trade and investment with China can provide these blocs with a partial offset. As sizable economic entities in their own right, Asian and European countries have a far greater ability to pursue a different path, even though they will be spending more to self-insure than they used to. For instance, orders for Eurofighter jets as an alternative to U.S. combat aircraft have surged among NATO members such as Spain and Turkey. And the Indonesian government, in the spring of 2025, struck new economic deals with China, including an approximately $3 billion “twin” industrial park project that will link Central Java with Fujian Province. The project is expected to create thousands of jobs in Indonesia at a moment when nothing of that kind is on offer from the United States. Indonesia’s central bank and the People’s Bank of China have also agreed to promote trade in local currencies, and the two countries have vowed to strengthen their maritime cooperation; both deals surprised U.S. policymakers.
A display of stock market indices, São Paulo, Brazil, July 2025 Alexandre Meneghini / Reuters
Additionally (and crucially), Trump’s economic policy is reinforcing and accelerating the separation of two clear tiers of emerging markets in terms of their resilience to macroeconomic shocks. During the 1998–99 and 2008–9 financial crises, even the largest emerging economies—Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Turkey—suffered badly. But they have become substantially more resilient, thanks to domestic reforms as well as new export and investment opportunities offered by richer countries (including China). During the COVID-19 pandemic and the U.S. Federal Reserve’s subsequent enormous interest-rate increase, their economies did not suffer much financial damage. The largest emerging markets remained able to adjust their fiscal and monetary policies with some autonomy.
Dozens of lower- and middle-income economies, by contrast, accumulated debt at a devastating pace. Since 2000, the decline in real income in these countries has more than offset the gains they had made in the previous decade. Trump’s new approach has further closed off their economic opportunities, and the way he has encouraged the larger emerging markets, particularly India, to adopt their own homeland-first policies only deepens poorer economies’ isolation.
Capital seeks opportunity, but also security. The U.S. withdrawal of economic insurance, and Trump’s hard turn against foreign aid and development, will reinforce investors’ preference for relatively stable locales. Thus, the poorest countries in Central America, Central and South Asia, and Africa are likely to become stuck in the economic lowlands with little means of exit while the larger, geopolitically significant emerging markets will, relatively speaking, become more attractive. Some of the poorest countries will make deals—for instance, by providing the United States with preferred access to their resources or serving as destinations for U.S. deportees. That response, however, cannot yield the kind of sustainable growth that many emerging economies enjoyed under the old U.S. insurance regime.
SOLID AND LIQUID
Perhaps the most important change the United States has made to its insurance scheme, however, is to reduce the dollar’s liquidity—which diminishes the safety of the portfolios of savers worldwide. U.S. assets that were previously viewed as low-to-no-risk can no longer be considered entirely safe. This will have far-reaching ramifications for the global availability and flow of capital.
During Trump’s 2024 election campaign and since he took office, top officials in his administration have repeatedly threatened to trap investors in U.S. Treasuries by, for example, forcing countries and institutions to swap their current holdings for longer-term or perpetual debt, punishing governments that promote the use of currencies other than the dollar, and taxing foreign investors at higher rates than domestic ones. Trump administration officials have not yet followed through. But these threats, combined with repeated attacks on the Federal Reserve’s independence and promises to depreciate the dollar, are steadily undermining the perceived stability of the dollar and Treasury bonds.
The underlying problem is that the world has more savings than it has safe places to stow them. Cash-rich surplus economies—places such as China, Germany, and Saudi Arabia, as well as smaller but striking examples such as Norway, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates—cannot keep all their savings at home for three reasons. First, their savers would lack diversification if a country-specific shock hits their economy. Second, forcing huge amounts of savings into these mostly small markets would distort asset prices, leading to bubbles, financial instability, and abrupt shifts in employment patterns. And third, such countries do not issue enough public debt, at least not enough that foreigners want to hold. This is why, for decades, the uniquely deep, broad, and apparently safe U.S. Treasuries market—and dollar-denominated assets in general—have absorbed the lion’s share of the world’s excess savings.
U.S. assets that were once viewed as low-to-no-risk are no longer safe.
Among the many benefits that Treasury bonds and other U.S. public markets offered to global investors, the most attractive was ample liquidity. Investors could convert assets they had in these markets into cash with few or no delays or costs. The valuation of their investments remained stable, and unlike in smaller markets, even a very large transaction would not swing prices. Investors did not have to worry that their counterparties would not accept their form of payment. With the exception of known criminals and entities targeted by sanctions, everyone in the world could rely on both the stability and flexibility of dollar-denominated investments—which in turn lowered the risk that businesses would face cash-flow crunches or miss opportunities.
The dollar’s dominance, which went well beyond what the United States’ GDP or share of global trade would have justified, constituted another win-win type of insurance. The United States collected premiums in the form of lower interest on its debt and steadier exchange rates. American and foreign asset holders both benefited. Even when a financial or geopolitical shock originated in the United States, investors assumed that the U.S. economy would remain safer than others. When U.S. markets directly triggered a worldwide recession in 2008, interest rates and the dollar fell and then rose together as capital from abroad flowed into the U.S. market.
Now the dollar appears to be behaving the way that most currencies do, which is to move in the opposite direction to interest rates. Until April of this year, the dollar closely tracked the day-to-day movements of the U.S. ten-year Treasury interest rate. Ever since the administration’s April 2 tariff announcements, the correlation between U.S. interest rates and the dollar has reversed, indicating that something other than day-to-day economic news is driving the dollar down.
Multiple times this year, the Trump administration has announced a surprise policy change that provoked economic volatility: on April 2, the “Liberation Day” tariffs; in May, the “One Big Beautiful Bill” spending package; and, over the course of June, several threats to impose additional tariffs, as well as the U.S. bombing of Iran. In response to each of these events, the dollar fell while U.S. long-term interest rates rose, indicating a capital outflow in response to turmoil.
Similarly, throughout modern history, tariff impositions have led to currency appreciations, including during Trump’s first term. This year, however, the dollar has depreciated as the president has imposed tariffs. This major break with the historical pattern suggests that global concerns about the instability of U.S. policy have begun to outweigh the usual flight to safety that pushes up the dollar.
The Trump administration’s hostile and unpredictable approach toward U.S.-led military alliances has further eroded support for the dollar. Washington’s new stance heightens the risk that it will sanction even allied foreign investors. And as the American-led alliances have less power to reassure, other governments are boosting their defense spending, which increases the relative attractiveness of their currencies. EU bond markets, for instance, are becoming bigger and deeper as debt-financed defense spending surges in northern and eastern Europe. The euro offers more benefit to Ukraine, the Balkan States, and some Middle Eastern and North African countries that aim to reduce their vulnerability to U.S. whims by seeking euro-denominated arms, trade, investment, loans, and development aid.
DEBT COLLECTORS
European and other markets, however, cannot fully replicate the advantages that dollar-denominated assets formerly conferred. The world’s investors, including American ones, will simply have fewer safe places to put their savings as U.S. assets become less liquid. This increased insecurity will drive up long-term average interest rates on U.S. government debt just when a lot more debt is being issued. All borrowers, private and sovereign, that participate in the U.S. financial system will feel the pinch of that interest-rate rise because all loans are priced off Treasury rates in some sense.
Some savers, particularly Chinese ones, may seek to move assets out of U.S. markets. But that flight will put deflationary pressure on their home economies as their overall returns shrink and excess savings become bottled up in markets that already had a more limited set of investment opportunities. Meanwhile, the value of alternative assets—nondollar currencies, commodities traditionally treated as stores of value such as gold and timber, and newer cryptocurrency products—will surge. Because these assets are less liquid, these upswings will almost certainly lead to periodic financial crashes and greatly complicate the challenges governments face in using monetary policy to stabilize economies. This will be a loss for the world with no net gain for the U.S. economy.
Just as persistent droughts motivate people to zealously guard access to their water supplies, a lack of liquidity in global markets encourages governments to ensure that their debt is funded at home rather than leaving it up to the market. These measures typically take the form of what is called financial repression: forcing financial institutions (and ultimately, households) to hold more public debt than they otherwise would, through some combination of regulations, capital outflow controls, and the forced allocation of newly issued debt. Financial repression tends to lower returns for savers and drives up their vulnerability to de facto expropriation.
Ultimately, the diminished availability of financing makes it harder for privately owned businesses as well as governments to ride out temporary downturns before exhausting their funding. They will have to accumulate reserves to cover dollar obligations (such as outstanding or interbank loans) in case of financial distress. If countries have to self-insure, both governments and businesses will become more risk-averse and have less available to invest, especially abroad, reinforcing the fragmentation of the world’s economy.
LOSE-LOSE
Without the insurance that the United States provided, new links between economies and pathways for investment will emerge. But they will be costlier to build and maintain, less broadly accessible, and less dependable. Countries will undoubtedly seek to self-insure, but those efforts will inherently be more costly and less effective than when risk was pooled under a single insurer. Navigating the world’s economy was never a smooth road. But after the earthquake of Trump’s economic regime change, the terrain has become much rougher.
In the end, money spent on insurance is money that cannot be spent on other things. Governments, institutions, and companies will have to pay simply to hedge against bad outcomes instead of funding good ones. Opportunities for investment and consumer choices will narrow. Growth in productivity (and therefore growth in real incomes) will slow as commercial competition, innovation, and global cooperation to create new infrastructure contract. Many of the poorest emerging markets will lose coverage against threats altogether—at the very moment when the risks they face are sharply increasing.
This means a worse world for almost everyone. Amid this change, however, China’s immediate economic environment will be the least altered despite Trump’s previous claims that he would design his economic policies to target Beijing most aggressively. China is relatively well positioned to attempt to self-insure after a U.S. withdrawal. More than any other major economy, it had already begun to reduce its reliance on the United States for exports, imports, investment, and technology. Whether China will be able to capture new external opportunities in the United States’ retreat will depend on whether it can overcome other countries’ skepticism about its reliability as an insurer. Will it merely seek to run the same kind of protection racket as the United States—or a worse one?
It is a tragic and destructive irony that, in the name of national security, the United States is now injuring the allies that have contributed the most to its economic well-being while leaving China far less disadvantaged. That is why Trump officials’ belief that these close allies will simply accept the “rebalancing” imposed on them is profoundly mistaken. These governments will be pragmatic, but that pragmatism will take a very different form than the Trump administration desires. For decades, they gave Washington the benefit of the doubt. Now they are losing their illusions and will offer less to the United States, not more.
Trump’s actions will alter China’s immediate economic environment the least.
There will be opportunities in this new landscape. But they will involve the U.S. economy less and less. The most promising possibility is that European and Asian countries, excluding China, will join to create a new space of relative stability. The EU and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, an alliance composed of mostly Indo-Pacific states, are already exploring new forms of cooperation. In June, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, described these negotiations as an effort at “redesigning” the World Trade Organization to “show the world that free trade with a large number of countries is possible on a rules-based foundation.” These economies could also do more to guarantee mutual investment rights, create binding mechanisms for settling trade disputes, and pool their liquidity to respond to financial shocks. They could seek to maintain the function and influence of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization, protecting these institutions from paralysis as China or the United States seek to veto necessary initiatives.
If they want to sustain some fraction of the global economy’s prior openness and stability, however, these countries will have to build blocs with a selective membership rather than pursue a strictly multilateral approach. This would be a poor substitute for the system over which the United States had presided. But it would be much better than simply accepting the economy that the Trump administration is now creating.
As for the United States itself, no matter how many bilateral trade deals it brokers, no matter how many economies appear—at first—to align with Washington at a high cost, the country will find itself increasingly bypassed in commerce and technology and less able to influence other countries’ investment and security decisions. The U.S. supply chains that the Trump administration claims to want to secure will become less reliable—inherently costlier, less diversified in their sourcing, and subject to more risk from U.S.-specific shocks. Leaving behind much of the developing world will not only increase migrant flows and trigger public health crises; it will prevent the United States from tapping potential market opportunities. The Trump administration’s moves to drive away foreign investment will erode U.S. living standards and the U.S. military’s capacity. European, Asian, and even Brazilian and Turkish brands will likely gain market share at American companies’ expense, while technical standards for products such as automobiles and financial services technologies will increasingly diverge from U.S. norms. Many of these phenomena will be self-reinforcing, making them hard to reverse even after Trump leaves the White House.
As the song goes, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. The Trump administration has paved paradise and put up a casino, with what will soon be an empty parking lot.
Foreign Affairs · More by Adam S. Posen · August 19, 2025
9. The Key to Taiwan’s National Defense Lies Beyond Budget Figures
There needs to be a national spirit to defend itself.
No one should be judging strength based solely on "arbitrary spending thresholds."
Excerpts:
Finally, any serious strategic calculus of Taiwan must account for U.S. domestic politics. U.S. foreign policy has historically oscillated between global engagement and retrenchment. These pendulum swings are driven by domestic debates, not alliance obligations, and are beyond Taiwan’s control.
In this context, Taiwan must demonstrate that it is not a reckless actor, and that it will not trigger crises that pull Washington unwillingly into conflict. By exercising strategic restraint and prudent decision-making, Taiwan can help preserve the bipartisan consensus in the United States – a consensus that views Taiwan as a model democracy worth protecting, a reliable high-tech powerhouse that benefits the liberal order, and a beacon of hope for Chinese-speaking communities in the future.
But Taiwan must also recognize a hard truth: U.S. support is not unconditional. The primary burden of defense lies with the Taiwanese people and their military. And that defense must be grounded in sound strategy, fiscal sustainability, and timely, deliverable procurement commitments.
Alexander Gray is right to caution against complacency. But the solution is not to chase arbitrary spending thresholds. Taiwan’s future security depends on its ability to integrate into regional strategies, adapt to evolving PLA capabilities, and manage its cooperation with the United States and its partners responsibly.
The Key to Taiwan’s National Defense Lies Beyond Budget Figures
Alexander Gray is right to caution against complacency. But the solution is not to chase arbitrary spending thresholds.
https://thediplomat.com/2025/08/the-key-to-taiwans-national-defense-lies-beyond-budget-figures/
By Alfred Chia Hsing Lin
August 24, 2025
Credit: Military News Agency, Ministry of National Defense, ROC (Taiwan)
Taiwan’s security is too often reduced to a number on a spreadsheet or a partisan talking point. Commentators such as Alexander B. Gray have issued valid warnings: that Taiwan’s defense spending remains inadequate, that the balance of power across the Taiwan Strait is tilting toward Beijing, and that U.S. support is not guaranteed. These are legitimate concerns. But the exclusive focus on budget figures and political blame games risks obscuring the far greater challenge: Taiwan’s misallocated budget and energy on domestic politics rather than managing military procurement projects.
The most urgent reality is that the ambitions of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) are no longer limited to Taiwan; Beijing’s military modernization is aimed at achieving political reordering. Taipei cannot be expected to shoulder the burden alone, because the defense of Taiwan is not a parochial issue. Taiwan’s arms procurement plans and military doctrine, no matter how ambitious, cannot by themselves pose a credible counterweight to the PLA’s systemic rise.
Just as Europe’s security depends on NATO’s collective strength, Asia’s stability requires multilateral coordination. A formal alliance structure akin to NATO may be politically unrealistic in the short term, given the region’s fragmented geopolitics. But this does not invalidate the need for multilateral thinking. When planning for contingencies in the Taiwan Strait and assessing the regional implications of PLA expansion, leaders must resist the temptation to demand that Taiwan engage in an unsustainable arms race – such as calls to increase its military budget to over 10 percent of GDP. This is not only fiscally irresponsible; it is strategically misguided.
Instead, the United States should lead efforts to embed Taiwan into a broader, institutionalized network of regional resilience. This includes automated and secure intelligence sharing, joint logistical and ammunition planning, and cooperative frameworks for maritime security and coastal defense training with key regional partners. For its part, Taiwan must orient its defense priorities toward this multilateral strategy – not reduce defense policy to a domestic contest over political credit or procurement contracts.
Inside Taiwan, debate is frequently dominated by a single question: how much money should be spent? But this question misses the point. The critical issue is not the topline budget figure, but what capabilities are acquired, how fast they can be delivered and deployed, and whether they meet Taiwan’s operational requirements in a modern battlefield. Repeated delivery delays – especially in the aftermath of U.S. commitments to Ukraine and the Gaza conflict – have left Taiwan exposed at a time when urgency is rising.
Equally important is the composition of Taiwan’s future force. While asymmetric capabilities such as mobile missile units, sea mines, and drones are indispensable to defending a geographically small island, Taiwan should not exclude the option of balancing these tools with other conventional systems – including fighter aircraft and frontline naval assets – that support broader deterrence goals.
Overcommitting to asymmetric warfare may send an unintended message. To Beijing, it might suggest that Taiwan has abandoned its longstanding goal of maintaining air and naval superiority within 24 nautical miles of its coastline, and is instead preparing for a prolonged urban war, hoping to impose reputational costs on China through civilian destruction and international condemnation. To Taiwan’s own people, it could imply that in the event of invasion, entire towns may suffer Mariupol-style devastation, shaking public confidence in the value – and feasibility – of national defense.
Such a posture would also undermine morale within Taiwan’s conventional forces. If pilots and naval officers believe they will be sent into battle without adequate platforms or modernization plans, their willingness to fight and sustain operational effectiveness will erode – especially as the PLA’s fleets of modern warships and advanced aircraft continue to expand.
Looking ahead, Taiwan must remain adaptive and forward-looking. The September 3 military parade in Beijing is expected to unveil new PLA platforms – probably including large long-range drones, autonomous land vehicles, amphibious robotic units, and underwater systems designed to neutralize aircraft carriers. If these systems are deployed, not only Taiwan but also its regional partners will need time to re-evaluate procurement strategies and update defense doctrines. Taiwan should avoid placing hasty orders for legacy platforms based on outdated assumptions, and instead pursue a sober reassessment of its future force structure in line with emerging PLA capabilities.
Military preparedness, however, extends beyond equipment. Taiwan also needs trained personnel, resilient infrastructure, and secure supply chains. One of the island’s greatest vulnerabilities is energy security. By phasing out nuclear energy, the current Democratic Progressive Party government has left Taiwan dependent on natural gas supplies that would last only 14 days in a crisis, making it dangerously exposed to economic and military coercion.
A national referendum on August 23 is expected to support restarting Taiwan’s Third Nuclear Power Plant. While welcome, this is only a first step. Taiwan must go further: embracing advanced small modular nuclear reactors, which offer safe, decentralized, and environmentally friendly power solutions. Such systems are not only pragmatic – they are essential to a modern defense strategy.
Finally, any serious strategic calculus of Taiwan must account for U.S. domestic politics. U.S. foreign policy has historically oscillated between global engagement and retrenchment. These pendulum swings are driven by domestic debates, not alliance obligations, and are beyond Taiwan’s control.
In this context, Taiwan must demonstrate that it is not a reckless actor, and that it will not trigger crises that pull Washington unwillingly into conflict. By exercising strategic restraint and prudent decision-making, Taiwan can help preserve the bipartisan consensus in the United States – a consensus that views Taiwan as a model democracy worth protecting, a reliable high-tech powerhouse that benefits the liberal order, and a beacon of hope for Chinese-speaking communities in the future.
But Taiwan must also recognize a hard truth: U.S. support is not unconditional. The primary burden of defense lies with the Taiwanese people and their military. And that defense must be grounded in sound strategy, fiscal sustainability, and timely, deliverable procurement commitments.
Alexander Gray is right to caution against complacency. But the solution is not to chase arbitrary spending thresholds. Taiwan’s future security depends on its ability to integrate into regional strategies, adapt to evolving PLA capabilities, and manage its cooperation with the United States and its partners responsibly.
Authors
Guest Author
Alfred Chia Hsing Lin
Alfred Chia Hsing Lin is a co-founder of the New Republic Report, a pro-ROC think tank based in New York and Taipei. He is also a former spokesperson of the Kuomintang (KMT). He holds an MA in international relations from New York University and is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in International Affairs at National Chung Hsing University in Taichung.
10.
Conclusion:
Resurrecting the bloc could pose a challenge to the US if it resulted in more coordinated action. But what binds these nations is necessity, not trust. The gathering in Tianjin will offer the opportunity for the optics of warmer ties, but it will be more symbolism than substance. This is an inherently fragile partnership, one that could unravel if American pressure diminishes.
Why the Russia-India-China Reboot Won’t Last
Trump’s trade war is pushing the three closer together, but trust issues run deep.
August 25, 2025 at 4:00 AM GMT+9
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-08-24/why-the-russia-india-china-reboot-won-t-last?sref=hhjZtX76
The three leaders — Putin, Modi and Xi — in 2019.Photographer: Mikhail Klimentyev/AFP/Getty Images
The Russia-India-China alliance, floated in the 1990s as a counterweight to the US, is being revived today as a way for the three countries to ride out the storm of President Donald Trump’s trade war. But old suspicions mean the union is unlikely to endure. Despite their shared grievances with Washington, the partnership is more a marriage of convenience.
That reality will be on display this week when the three nuclear powers converge in Tianjin for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit. The Kremlin is pressing for a long-awaited trilateral meeting. If the troika did find new life, it would send a powerful signal that the geopolitical heavyweights are aligning in the face of US pressure. But the inherent tensions between India and China, and economic differences between the three, make that outcome unlikely.
That pressure is most acute for India. Until recently a key American partner, it has borne the brunt of Trump’s tariffs. He doubled duties on exports to 50% — due to go into effect on Aug. 27 — as punishment for its purchases of Russian oil.
Beijing, originally Washington’s primary target, is enjoying a temporary reprieve, but is stuck in a long-term strategic competition. And Russia, battered by sanctions and bogged down in Ukraine, is on the hunt for friends to blunt its isolation.
Moscow first dreamed up the idea of RIC, as it was dubbed, in the 1990s. Then-Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov proposed the formation of the group to challenge the US’s global influence. The coalition looked formidable on paper — three nations with huge economies and populations. In practice, it’s always been undermined by mistrust, above all between rivals India and China.
Among the biggest sticking points is their long-running border dispute. They’ve been at loggerheads over an ill-defined 3,488 kilometer (2,170 mile) frontier in the Himalayan region. Those hostilities erupted into a war in 1962, and continue to simmer today. In 2020, the two clashed violently in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley, leaving soldiers dead on both sides in the bloodiest fighting in decades. Diplomatic ties froze, with New Delhi suspending tourist visas for Chinese nationals, and imposing restrictions on tech imports.
Trump’s tariffs are nudging them closer. Last week, they agreed to explore demarcating their disputed border, a key move toward resolving the territorial dispute. Strains around visas have eased and China has expressed solidarity with India on exports.
But the risk of future standoffs can’t be discounted. The fundamental contradictions in the dynamic are unlikely to disappear soon, Happymon Jacob, founder and director of the Council for Strategic and Defense Research, notes for the Hindustan Times. While serious violence may have been averted for now, a lasting rapprochement is unlikely. It’s hard for New Delhi to be fully confident of Beijing’s intentions, especially in light of its military assertiveness in areas like the South China Sea and Taiwan.
China is also far too close to Pakistan for India’s comfort. Beijing has become Islamabad’s most important defense partner since the end of the Cold War. During a clash with India in May, Pakistan claimed Chinese-made J-10C jets were used to shoot down five Indian fighter jets during the conflict. New Delhi said the PRC also provided its rival with air defense and satellite support. This alignment deepens India’s security anxieties, and reinforces the sense that China can’t be trusted.
Setting security aside, the economic logic doesn’t work in New Delhi’s favor. India depends on US technology, capital, and supply chains — which neither Russia nor China can replace. America is also the most important market for Indian goods, by a wide margin. In 2024, consumers bought $77.5 billion worth of Indian goods, according to a Bank of Baroda report. In comparison, Chinese and Russian purchases were only a fraction of that.
The US Is Still the Biggest Market for India
Exports to America far outweigh other partners
Source: Bank of Baroda, India Brand Equity Foundation, Indian Ministry of Commerce
In contrast, Moscow is much closer to Beijing. Since Western sanctions were imposed in 2014 after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, bilateral trade between the two has surged to record highs, surpassing $200 billion last year. Businesses are increasingly connected to the Chinese financial system through the use of the yuan, and services like UnionPay cards. For New Delhi, joining such a bloc would mean being the junior partner — hardly an appealing prospect.
That hasn’t stopped Moscow from trying to rejuvenate it. In May, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said “the time has come for the revival” of the troika. Beijing has also backed the initiative, saying it could uphold peace, security, and stability in the world.
Resurrecting the bloc could pose a challenge to the US if it resulted in more coordinated action. But what binds these nations is necessity, not trust. The gathering in Tianjin will offer the opportunity for the optics of warmer ties, but it will be more symbolism than substance. This is an inherently fragile partnership, one that could unravel if American pressure diminishes.
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Karishma Vaswani is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia politics with a special focus on China. Previously, she was the BBC's lead Asia presenter and worked for the BBC across Asia and South Asia for two decades.
11. China’s Political System Makes Consumption-led Growth Impossible
Excerpts:
Together, these four dynamics mean that China’s politics effectively make consumption-led growth impossible, necessitating instead a reliance on investment and exports. For the same reasons, it is politically impossible to rebalance China’s economy. While China under Hu Jintao gradually increased household consumption, Xi’s greater emphasis on political security has led to a doubling down on investment and exports.
This is why recent measures to promote consumption have not worked. They are not intended to work. Short-term consumption vouchers are not a solution to a structural problem. China may want to recover a few percentage points of consumption lost since COVID-19, but does not intend to restructure its economy. As the logical consequence of the argument made here, such a restructuring can only take place if China’s political system is reformed first – and such reform is unlikely.
China’s Political System Makes Consumption-led Growth Impossible
Beijing’s prioritization of political security necessitates a reliance on investment and exports – not consumption – to power the economy.
https://thediplomat.com/2025/08/chinas-political-system-makes-consumption-led-growth-impossible/
By Mathias Larsen
August 23, 2025
Credit: Depositphotos
The Chinese economy is, arguably, more imbalanced than ever. The continuous stream of facts and arguments from people like Michael Pettis and Brad Setser show this beyond any doubt. In the context of China’s state-steered economic system, this imbalance is not a coincidental outcome of domestic and international market circumstances. Instead, it is a direct result of political decisions.
The Chinese government prioritizes political security above all else and implements a growth model that supports this goal. This inherently entails a preference for investment and exports over consumption. The logic is simple: Investment and exports can be more directly controlled by the state than consumption. In consequence, China simply can not rely on consumption under its current political system. While the details of China’s economic model are well known, the fact that this model is an intentional outcome of the country’s political institutions receives much less attention. Here, four dynamics are critical.
First, growth is not always the dominant state priority, as it coexists with frequently conflicting political security concerns. The need for political security entails, for example, China’s well-known measures to control the population and oppress labor, such as the hukou system, banning labor unions and strikes, closing the capital account, and repressing interest rates on savings. This translates into lower wages and suppressed domestic consumption.
Prioritizing political security also entails an emphasis on sources of growth that can more easily be controlled by the government – namely investment, through state capital, and exports, by subsidizing manufacturing. Repressing consumption while supporting investments and exports is, of course, directly compatible and mutually reinforcing.
Prioritization of political security also stifles economic reforms and lowers government efficiency. In a return of a sarcastic slogan from the Mao era, the government’s preference for high-level policymakers is, once again, “better red than expert.” This means that the government is willing to sacrifice competent economic management for political loyalty, and will only support growth that is compatible with control of the citizenry.
Second, the growth model is based on the interests of the dominant political coalition around the central government. These interests include maximizing their own economic gain, increasing the country’s international power, and maintaining continuous political control. The coalition is made up of high-level central government state bureaucrats, managers of centrally owned state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and the members of CCP’s Central Committee.
While powerful alternative coalitions have existed in the past, their influence is smaller today. The downfall of these coalitions is personified by Jack Ma (representing private sector interests), Bo Xilai (representing local governments), and Hu Jintao (representing another intra-party faction). This means that China’s economic policy is designed to specifically serve the political and economic interests of this central political coalition, with little ability of particular regions or industries to oppose economic policies.
Third, China’s political institutions mean that the government faces few restrictions on policymaking. They do not have to grapple with electoral or institutional-legal constraints, such as independent central banks or “golden rules” on the use of macroeconomic policies, which constitutes effective state capacity in the pursuit of a preferred growth model. This allows China to use macroeconomic tools that would be difficult or impossible to use in democracies, such as financial repression, a closed capital account, and using monetary policy toward non-orthodox goals. In a democracy, it would be hard to imagine getting electoral support for policies that voters lose from in so many ways – few would be willing to sacrifice improvements in public healthcare, for support toward exporting cars. This capacity itself does not imply a preference against consumption, but allows this already existing preference to be effectively pursued.
Fourth, the Chinese government’s political ideology is opposed to the state providing extensive welfare benefits. Xi Jinping himself declared that in Latin American countries, “high levels of welfare created a generation of lazy people that would not work, resulting in an unsustainable fiscal burden and the middle-income trap,” while in Scandinavian welfare states, “over-welfarism has resulted in an undynamic society.” Unsurprisingly, the government’s limited provision of welfare services is itself an impediment to household consumption, as ordinary citizens must save to cover the costs of education, healthcare, elder care, and other social expenses. This means that extensive government consumption – another type of consumption – is also out of the question.
Together, these four dynamics mean that China’s politics effectively make consumption-led growth impossible, necessitating instead a reliance on investment and exports. For the same reasons, it is politically impossible to rebalance China’s economy. While China under Hu Jintao gradually increased household consumption, Xi’s greater emphasis on political security has led to a doubling down on investment and exports.
This is why recent measures to promote consumption have not worked. They are not intended to work. Short-term consumption vouchers are not a solution to a structural problem. China may want to recover a few percentage points of consumption lost since COVID-19, but does not intend to restructure its economy. As the logical consequence of the argument made here, such a restructuring can only take place if China’s political system is reformed first – and such reform is unlikely.
Authors
Guest Author
Mathias Larsen
Mathias Larsen is a postdoctoral research associate at Brown University’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs. His research concerns the political economy of the role of the state in financing sustainable development, focusing on the case of China and other Global South countries.
12. A man, a plan, an electoral sham in Myanmar
Excerpts:
The generals have clearly learned from what they now view as the mistakes of allowing too much openness from 2011–2021, and there will be no repeat of that semi-democratic experiment that inevitably strengthened popular opposition to military rule.
Yet, despite this reality, Myanmar’s immediate neighbors—and possibly other countries—are likely to accept a post-election regime back into their circles of associates and partners. This is the bitter truth that democracy advocates and armed resistance groups in Myanmar must begin to come to terms with as Min Aung Hlaing trades in his khakis for civilian wares.
A man, a plan, an electoral sham in Myanmar - Asia Times
Coup-maker Min Aung Hlaing is pushing an utterly illegitimate election — but that’s immaterial to his bigger plan
asiatimes.com · Bertil Lintner · August 24, 2025
A new name, fresh appointments and a minor reshuffle at the top — it’s all part of the Myanmar junta’s bid to prepare the nation and sell the outside world on its controversial general election plan for December.
The generals in Naypyitaw are counting on the election to confer the legitimacy they’ve lacked since seizing power in a February 2021 coup that ousted an elected government.
Critics have dismissed the planned vote as a junta ploy, branding it a “generals’ election” rather than a genuine general election — a label that may prove more accurate than not.
Since the coup, the military has faced armed resistance across large parts of the country. While the anti-junta forces—both political and ethnic—may not control as much territory as they claim, it is clear that the upcoming elections can hardly be described as “nationwide” and will likely be dismissed by many as a sham.
But that may not concern the generals in Naypyitaw, and the stark reality is military rule in Myanmar is here to stay — in one form or another — as it has been since the men in green first seized power in a 1962 coup.
The country experienced a decade of relative openness, starting in 2011, with the introduction of limited freedoms; however, the generals never truly relinquished power. They remained in the background, protected by a pro-military constitution and ready to intervene when threatened, as they decisively did in the 2021 coup that overthrew a democratically elected government.
Regardless of how Myanmar’s democratic forces and their international supporters view the upcoming election, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which Myanmar is a member, is almost certain to endorse the result as a positive step after more than four years of intensified civil conflict.
China is expected to accept the election outcome without reservation, while India, Bangladesh and perhaps Japan will likely consider even a flawed election preferable to no election at all. Australia, with its long history of trying to engage Myanmar’s military regimes, may also feel that engaging whoever holds power in Naypyitaw is better than isolating them.
The State Administration Council (SAC), established after the 2021 coup, has been formally dissolved and replaced by a new governing body called the State Security and Peace Commission (SSPC).
This mirrors a previous rebranding in 1997, when the then-junta known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) adopted the more palatable State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) moniker.
Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the architect of the 2021 coup and instigator of the now near nationwide war, will remain interim president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
His close associate, General Nyo Saw—who joined the SAC in 2023—has been appointed prime minister and minister of national planning, reflecting his background as a military economist.
He also serves as chairman of one of the military’s main holding companies, the Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC), and holds key roles in another military-controlled conglomerate, the Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited, as well as in MEC-founded Innwa Bank.
But who is Min Aung Hlaing really? Unless something unexpected occurs—a common uncertainty in Myanmar’s military politics—he is likely to shed his military uniform after the election and transition from interim president to official head of state. But anyone in the international or regional community hoping that change in garbs signals new reforms will likely be disappointed.
Numerous human rights organizations have documented how Min Aung Hlaing and his coup associates have imprisoned thousands of dissenters, many of whom were tortured to death in detention. He has also ordered thousands of airstrikes on resistance-held areas with little regard for civilian casualties, including in zones recently devastated by earthquakes.
The International Criminal Court in The Hague has issued a global arrest warrant for Min Aung Hlaing, citing “reasonable grounds to believe” that he bears criminal responsibility for crimes against humanity, including the deportation and persecution of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority.
Min Aung Hlaing’s rise to power is closely linked to Senior General Than Shwe, chairman of the former SLORC and SPDC juntas. Than Shwe, who took power in 1992, stepped down in 2011, paving the way for a more constitutional form of government.
Under Than Shwe and his predecessor General Saw Maung’s autocratic rule, Myanmar became pariah state due to the military’s appalling human rights record, which included the killing of thousands of pro-democracy protesters in 1988 and subsequent brutal crackdowns. As Western countries imposed sanctions and boycotts, China emerged as Myanmar’s sole international ally.
Over time, however, Than Shwe grew wary of Myanmar’s overdependence on Beijing and sought to secure his legacy through a tightly controlled political reform program aimed at appeasing Western calls for a more democratic order.
A constitution drafted under military oversight was adopted following a fraudulent 2008 referendum, and a tightly managed 2010 election ensured victory for the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).
To avoid the humiliating fates of predecessor autocrats Ne Win and Saw Maung, who both died in obscurity, Than Shwe handpicked not one but three trusted generals as his successors: Thein Sein as president, Min Aung Hlaing as military chief and Shwe Mann as parliamentary speaker. Min Aung Hlaing was chosen because he was not seen as particularly strong and posed no threat to the old strongman.
However, surprising initiatives followed once Thein Sein assumed the presidency. Political prisoners were released, the press was liberalized and the long-persecuted National League for Democracy (NLD) was allowed to re-enter the political arena. These moves transformed Myanmar’s international image and earned Western recognition and praise.
Though hailed as a democratic opening, these initiatives were part of a carefully calculated strategy for the military to retain power. Still, society began to change in ways the military had not anticipated, including a surge in civil society organizations and a free, outspoken press.
In 2015 and 2020, voters overwhelmingly supported the NLD, and Shwe Mann aligned himself with pro-democracy forces, leading to his expulsion from the USDP. Following the NLD’s second landslide victory and its promises to amend the 2008 constitution to curtail military power, Min Aung Hlaing staged a coup, arresting NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi and toppling her government.
Min Aung Hlaing was born on July 3, 1956, in Minbu, Magway region. He entered the Defense Services Academy in 1974 on his third attempt, graduating in 1977 with an unremarkable record and reputedly not particularly liked by his elite military academy classmates.
However, through loyalty to Than Shwe, he steadily climbed the military ranks, eventually leading the Bureau of Special Operations-2 in 2009. In this role, he oversaw brutal operations in Kokang, northeastern Shan state, which caused mass displacement of civilians into China.
At the same time, resistance forces—both Burman-dominated political groups and ethnic armed organizations—emerged strongly following the 2021 coup, managing to wrest control over large swaths of territory in the north, northeast and west.
As the SAC’s forces suffered humiliating defeats, military insiders reportedly criticized Min Aung Hlaing for being too weak and indecisive on the battlefield. There was speculation that his deputy, Vice Senior General Soe Win—more experienced and hardline—might replace him as commander-in-chief.
That, however, may no longer be the case. The Myanmar military now appears to be gaining the upper hand in the country’s many ongoing civil conflicts. While the Arakan Army, a local resistance group in western Rakhine state, seems to be holding its ground, other anti-junta forces have been forced to retreat from several areas they captured after the coup.
If Min Aung Hlaing transitions to a “civilian” role after the election, who will assume the commander-in-chief position—a post even more powerful in Myanmar’s overall power structure?
Soe Win is a strong candidate, but military insiders also mention General Kyaw Swar Lin, the current chief of general staff. However, Kyaw Swar Lin lacks combat experience and may hold his position primarily due to his loyalty to Min Aung Hlaing.
The intrigues within Myanmar’s military make its internal politics as opaque as Kremlinology once was in the Soviet Union, and as they remain in China and other authoritarian states today. What is clear, however, is that the military will not relinquish power to any civilian—or even quasi-civilian—entity.
The generals have clearly learned from what they now view as the mistakes of allowing too much openness from 2011–2021, and there will be no repeat of that semi-democratic experiment that inevitably strengthened popular opposition to military rule.
Yet, despite this reality, Myanmar’s immediate neighbors—and possibly other countries—are likely to accept a post-election regime back into their circles of associates and partners. This is the bitter truth that democracy advocates and armed resistance groups in Myanmar must begin to come to terms with as Min Aung Hlaing trades in his khakis for civilian wares.
asiatimes.com · Bertil Lintner · August 24, 2025
13. The Era of the Aircraft Carrier Is About to End
Or what did Mark Twain say about his death?
Excerpts:
The Bottom Line
This is the uncomfortable truth we must be willing to embrace.
The era of the aircraft carrier operating with impunity in any ocean it chooses is over. It does not mean the carrier is obsolete, but its role must fundamentally change.
We can no longer risk sending our most valuable naval assets into a shooting gallery. The Navy must adapt, investing in longer-range unmanned aircraft, more survivable surface combatants, and a more distributed, resilient force structure.
If we don’t, we face the daunting prospect of seeing the symbol of American power neutralized—or worse, sent to the bottom of the Pacific.
The Era of the Aircraft Carrier Is About to End
nationalsecurityjournal.org · Harry Kazianis · August 24, 2025
For the better part of a century, nothing has projected American power more effectively than the aircraft carrier.
A 100,000-ton behemoth of sovereign U.S. territory, capable of launching a more powerful air force than most nations possess, the supercarrier has been the undisputed king of the seas.
It is the centerpiece of our naval strategy, the first asset sent to any global crisis, and the ultimate symbol of our military might.
The Aircraft Carrier Era Is Over
But what if the king is now vulnerable?
What if a weapon exists that can turn our most powerful asset into our most catastrophic liability?
Take it from me: that weapon is no longer theoretical.
China’s development and deployment of advanced anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs), specifically the DF-21D and the longer-range DF-26B, represents the most significant threat to U.S. naval supremacy since the Cold War.
These are not just another class of missile; they are a revolutionary capability designed for a single purpose: to hold American aircraft carriers at risk and push them out of the Western Pacific. To understand their impact is to understand the daunting new reality of a potential U.S.-China conflict.
To grasp why these missiles are such a game-changer, you have to understand how they differ from traditional anti-ship weapons. For decades, the primary threat to a carrier was from cruise missiles or submarines. While dangerous, these were threats the Navy’s layered defense systems were designed to counter. A cruise missile flies low and relatively slow, giving a carrier strike group’s Aegis cruisers and destroyers a chance to detect, track, and shoot it down.
An anti-ship ballistic missile is a different beast entirely. Launched from mobile launchers hundreds or even thousands of miles inland, the DF-21D and DF-26B rocket into the upper atmosphere. They travel at hypersonic speeds—we’re talking Mach 10 or higher—before plummeting back to Earth, coming down on their target from an almost vertical angle.
This trajectory creates a nightmarish problem for our defenses. Intercepting an object moving that fast, from that angle, is exponentially more difficult than hitting a sea-skimming cruise missile.
What a ‘Wargame’ Can Teach Us
Let’s wargame it out for a moment. Imagine a crisis over Taiwan. The President orders a carrier strike group into the Philippine Sea to signal American resolve. China’s military, however, has spent two decades building a sophisticated system to counter this exact move. This is their “kill chain.”
First, they have to find the carrier. This is no small task in the vastness of the Pacific, but China has invested heavily in a network of over-the-horizon radars, long-range drones, submarines, and, most importantly, a constellation of surveillance satellites. Once they have a fix on the carrier’s location, that data is relayed to a land-based missile brigade.
Then comes the launch. A salvo of DF-21Ds or DF-26Bs is fired. In the terminal phase of their flight, the missiles’ maneuverable reentry vehicles (MaRVs) use their own onboard sensors to make final adjustments, allowing them to hit a moving ship. The carrier strike group’s defenses spring into action, launching their own SM-3 and SM-6 interceptors. But they are facing multiple warheads descending at over two miles per second. They have to be perfect. The missile only has to be lucky once.
A single DF-21D warhead striking a carrier’s flight deck would be a mission-kill. It wouldn’t sink the ship, but it would crack the deck, making it impossible to launch or recover aircraft. The carrier, for all intents and purposes, would be out of the fight. Several successful hits could very well sink the vessel, resulting in the tragic loss of over 5,000 American sailors and a $13 billion national asset. It would be a Pearl Harbor-level catastrophe, a blow from which American prestige might never recover.
The strategic implication here is even more profound than the loss of a single ship. The DF-21D has a range of over 900 miles, and the DF-26B can reach targets nearly 2,500 miles away. This creates a massive “anti-access/area denial” (A2/AD) bubble. To stay safe, U.S. carriers would be forced to operate far outside these ranges. The problem is that our primary carrier-based fighter, the F/A-18 Super Hornet, has a combat radius of around 500 miles. If the carrier is pushed 1,000 miles out to sea, its air wing is rendered useless for a conflict over Taiwan.
The Bottom Line
This is the uncomfortable truth we must be willing to embrace.
The era of the aircraft carrier operating with impunity in any ocean it chooses is over. It does not mean the carrier is obsolete, but its role must fundamentally change.
We can no longer risk sending our most valuable naval assets into a shooting gallery. The Navy must adapt, investing in longer-range unmanned aircraft, more survivable surface combatants, and a more distributed, resilient force structure.
If we don’t, we face the daunting prospect of seeing the symbol of American power neutralized—or worse, sent to the bottom of the Pacific.
More About Harry Kazianis
Harry J. Kazianis (@Grecianformula) is Editor-In-Chief and President of National Security Journal. He was the former Senior Director of National Security Affairs at the Center for the National Interest (CFTNI), a foreign policy think tank founded by Richard Nixon based in Washington, DC. Harry has over a decade of experience in think tanks and national security publishing. His ideas have been published in the NY Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and many other outlets worldwide. He has held positions at CSIS, the Heritage Foundation, the University of Nottingham, and several other institutions related to national security research and studies. He holds a Master’s degree focusing on international affairs from Harvard University.
nationalsecurityjournal.org · Harry Kazianis · August 24, 2025
14. US VP Vance says Russia has made significant concessions toward Ukraine peace deal
What are those concessions?
Excerpt:
"They've recognised that they're not going to be able to install a puppet regime in Kyiv. That was, of course, a major demand at the beginning. And importantly, they've acknowledged that there is going to be some security guarantee to the territorial integrity of Ukraine."
US VP Vance says Russia has made significant concessions toward Ukraine peace deal
Vice President JD Vance listens as President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, Aug. 22, 2025, in Washington. (Photo: AP/Jacquelyn Martin)
25 Aug 2025 03:57AM
US Vice President JD Vance said Russia has made "significant concessions" toward a negotiated settlement in its war with Ukraine and was confident progress was being made despite the lack of clear signs the conflict is nearing an end.
Speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press with Kristen Welker", Vance said Russian President Vladimir Putin has made several concessions, including that Ukraine will receive security guarantees protecting against future Russian aggression.
"I think the Russians have made significant concessions to President Trump for the first time in three and a half years of this conflict," Vance said in comments aired on Sunday (Aug 24).
"They've recognised that they're not going to be able to install a puppet regime in Kyiv. That was, of course, a major demand at the beginning. And importantly, they've acknowledged that there is going to be some security guarantee to the territorial integrity of Ukraine."
Russia's invasion of Ukraine, launched in February 2022, started a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people. In return for ending Russia's attacks, Putin is demanding that Ukraine give up all of the eastern Donbas region, renounce ambitions to join NATO, remain neutral and keep Western troops out of the country, sources told Reuters last week.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview broadcast on Sunday that a group of nations including United Nations Security Council members should be the guarantors of Ukraine's security.
On Friday President Donald Trump renewed a threat to impose sanctions on Russia if there was no progress toward a peaceful settlement in Ukraine in two weeks, showing frustration at Moscow a week after his meeting with Putin in Alaska.
Vance said sanctions would be considered on a case-by-case basis, acknowledging that new penalties were unlikely to prompt Russia to agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine.
Vance pointed to Trump's announcement this month of an additional 25 percent tariff on Indian goods as a punishment for New Delhi's purchases of Russian oil as the kind of economic leverage that would be used in pursuit of peace.
"He's tried to make it clear that Russia can be re-invited into the world economy if they stop the killing, but they're going to continue to be isolated if they don't stop the killing," Vance said.
Source: Reuters/fs
15. Former CIA Director Petraeus says Putin is ‘the obstacle to peace’ in Ukraine
Excerpt:
"There's not that much right now that would lead us to believe that," Petraeus told ABC News' "This Week" co-anchor Jonathan Karl. “I don't think, in fact, out of the last two weeks, really, Jonathan, I think what should be clear to all, and I think it is even clear to President Trump, is that despite all of his efforts, again, which we applaud to end the war, to stop the killing, Vladimir Putin clearly has no intention of doing that unless he's given additional territory, which is heavily fortified, and Russian forces would have to fight for years at the pace that they're going."
Former CIA Director Petraeus says Putin is ‘the obstacle to peace’ in Ukraine
Petraeus says he's doubtful that Putin and Zenlenskyy will meet.
ByKendall WrightAugust 25, 2025, 12:26 AM
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/former-cia-director-petraeus-putin-obstacle-peace-ukraine/story?id=124922863
ABCNews.com · ABC News
Former CIA Director and retired Army Gen. David Petraeus said Sunday that he's dubious that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will meet to discuss ending the war in Ukraine.
"There's not that much right now that would lead us to believe that," Petraeus told ABC News' "This Week" co-anchor Jonathan Karl. “I don't think, in fact, out of the last two weeks, really, Jonathan, I think what should be clear to all, and I think it is even clear to President Trump, is that despite all of his efforts, again, which we applaud to end the war, to stop the killing, Vladimir Putin clearly has no intention of doing that unless he's given additional territory, which is heavily fortified, and Russian forces would have to fight for years at the pace that they're going."
Petraeus’ comments come after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with President Trump last week in Washington alongside a contingent of other European leaders in pursuit of gathering more support to broker a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine.
Ukraine's air force said Russia launched 72 drones and one Iskander-M ballistic missile into the country in its latest overnight barrage, of which 48 drones were intercepted or suppressed, as the country marked the anniversary of its 1991 declaration of independence from the Soviet Union. Ukraine continued its own long-range attacks on Russia overnight, according to Russia's Defense Ministry, which said it shot down 95 Ukrainian drones over 14 regions during the latest exchange.
Former CIA Director and retired Army Gen. David Petraeus appears on ABC News' "This Week" on Aug. 24, 2025.
ABC News
Petraeus said that currently the “obstacle to peace” is Putin. He says that the U.S. should reconsider restrictions on some weapons that it won't send to Ukraine and send more aid to ultimately bring an end to the 3 1/2-year war.
“And what we need to do is change those dynamics by helping Ukraine far more than we have so far. Lifting restrictions on them, seizing the $300 billion of frozen reserves and European countries of Russian money, giving it to Ukraine. More sanctions on Russia, even including the Gazprom bank, and curtailing the export of oil further than we have already,” Petraeus said.
Petraeus referred to a Wall Street Journal report that the Pentagon is limiting Ukraine’s use of U.S.-made long-range missiles against targets in Russia.
“This is another case where it appears that the Pentagon is carrying out policies that conflict with President Trump's inclination. Now, I can understand why they would limit the use of certain long-range systems against Russia when they think that Russia might still be willing to make a deal. But that should be very clear not to be the case, at this moment, and I hope that there will be a review of that policy,” Petraeus said.
Nonetheless, Petraeus said he knows the war cannot last forever, saying that the war so far has killed and wounded 1.06 million Russians, including more than 500,000 that haven’t been able to return to the front lines due to the severity of their injuries, and is also having a "very substantial impact" on its civilian workforce.
“This has to have, over time, a very, very substantial impact on the ability of Russia just to find a civilian workforce as well. In fact, it's reported that they were actually looking in Africa for women who can actually replace some of the men in Russia, in various industries,” Petraeus said.
Petraeus also responded Sunday to the Trump administration either firing or reassigning 16 top military officers, seven of whom are women, thus far into his second term. The latest removals happened Friday, including the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, just weeks after he oversaw a preliminary report that contradicted Trump’s assertion that Iran’s nuclear sites were obliterated by U.S. strikes in June.
“I think it has to be a concern. Obviously, it's unprecedented. There's never been anything like this,” Petraeus said. “There have been cases in the past where individuals who've gotten crosswise with the president or with the secretary of defense certainly, usually on a policy issue in which they should not have spoken out and indeed were replaced. But the numbers here obviously are much more significant than that.”
ABCNews.com · ABC News
16. What Does China Want?
Excerpt:
This leads to a key question: What does China want? To answer this question, this article examines contemporary China's goals and fears in words and deeds. In contrast to the conventional view, the evidence provided in this article leads to one overarching conclusion and three specific observations. Overall, China is a status quo power concerned with regime stability, and it remains more inwardly focused than externally oriented. More specifically: China's aims are unambiguous; China's aims are enduring; and China's aims are limited.
Read the entire essay at this link: https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article/50/1/46/132729/What-Does-China-Want
What Does China Want? Free
David C. Kang, Jackie S. H. Wong, Zenobia T. Chan
International Security (2025) 50 (1): 46–81.
https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC.a.5
Abstract
The conventional wisdom is that China is a rising hegemon eager to replace the United States, dominate international institutions, and re-create the liberal international order in its own image. Drawing on data from 12,000 articles and hundreds of speeches by Xi Jinping, to discern China's intentions we analyze three terms or phrases from Chinese rhetoric: “struggle” (斗争), “rise of the East, decline of the West” (东升西降), and “no intention to replace the United States” ((无意取代美国). Our findings indicate that China is a status quo power concerned with regime stability and is more inwardly focused than externally oriented. China's aims are unambiguous, enduring, and limited: It cares about its borders, sovereignty, and foreign economic relations. China's main concerns are almost all regional and related to parts of China that the rest of the region has agreed are Chinese—Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang. Our argument has three main implications. First, China does not pose the type of military threat that the conventional wisdom claims it does. Thus, a hostile U.S. military posture in the Pacific is unwise and may unnecessarily create tensions. Second, the two countries could cooperate on several overlooked issue areas. Third, the conventional view of China plays down the economic and diplomatic arenas that a war-fighting approach is unsuited to address.
There is much about China that is disturbing for the West. China's gross domestic product grew from $1.2 trillion in 2000 to $17 trillion in 2023.1 Having modernized the People's Liberation Army over the past generation, China is also rapidly increasing its stockpile of nuclear warheads. China spends almost $300 billion annually on defense.2 Current leader Xi Jinping has consolidated power and appears set to rule the authoritarian Communist country indefinitely. Chinese firms often engage in questionable activities, such as restricting data, inadequately enforcing intellectual property rights, and engaging in cyber theft.3 The Chinese government violates human rights and restricts numerous personal freedoms for its citizens. In violation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), every country in the region, including China, is reclaiming land and militarizing islets in the disputed East and South China Seas. In short, China poses many potential problems to the United States and indeed to the world.
In U.S. academic and policymaking circles, the conventional wisdom is that China wants to dominate the world and expand its territory. For example, Elbridge Colby, deputy assistant secretary of defense during Donald Trump's first term and undersecretary of defense for Trump's second term, writes: “If China could subjugate Taiwan, it could then lift its gaze to targets farther afield … a natural next target for Beijing would be the Philippines … Vietnam, although not a U.S. ally, might also make a good target.”4 Rush Doshi, deputy senior director for China and Taiwan during the Joe Biden administration and a key architect of the Biden administration's China policy, writes that China has been playing a long game to “displace the United States as world leader.”5 Aaron Friedberg, deputy assistant for national security affairs and director of policy planning for Vice President Dick Cheney during the George W. Bush administration, warns of “China's expanding territorial claims” and its aggressive attempt to “replace the United States as the world's leading economic and technological nation and to displace it as the preponderant power in East Asia.”6 Stephen Walt writes that the problem is “regional hegemony in Asia: China would like to have it…and use that position to make significant revisions to the international status quo.”7 Hal Brands and Michael Beckley assert that “although Beijing would surely like to knock Vietnam down, an even juicier target would be the Philippines, which meets all the criteria of being a perfect enemy…the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] is undertaking an epic project to rewrite the rules of global order in Asia and far beyond … it wants to be the superpower.”8 The then–U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said in 2022 that “China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it.”9 Trump's former U.S. trade representative, Robert Lithgizer, claims that “China to me is an existential threat to the United States…. China views itself as number one in the world and wants to be that way.”10
These assessments of China's intentions lead mainstream U.S. scholars and policy analysts from both the Left and the Right to policy prescriptions that will take generations to unfold, and that are almost completely focused on war-fighting, deterrence, and decoupling from China. Those who believe in this China threat call for increasing U.S. military expenditures and showing “resolve” toward China. The conventional wisdom also advocates a regional expansion of alliances with any country, democratic or authoritarian, that could join the United States to contain China.11 As Colby writes, “This is a book about war.”12 Brands and Beckley argue that the United States should reinforce its efforts to deter China from invading Taiwan: “What is needed is a strategy to deter or perhaps win a conflict in the 2020s … the Pentagon can dramatically raise the costs of a Chinese invasion by turning the international waters of the Taiwan Strait into a death trap for attacking forces.”13 Doshi argues that the United States should arm countries such as “Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and India” with capabilities to contain China.14
This leads to a key question: What does China want? To answer this question, this article examines contemporary China's goals and fears in words and deeds. In contrast to the conventional view, the evidence provided in this article leads to one overarching conclusion and three specific observations. Overall, China is a status quo power concerned with regime stability, and it remains more inwardly focused than externally oriented. More specifically: China's aims are unambiguous; China's aims are enduring; and China's aims are limited.
Continued at the link: https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article/50/1/46/132729/What-Does-China-Want
17. Renewed Presence, Rising Tensions: Trump’s South China Sea Policy Is Taking Shape
Excerpts:
However, there is no indication that a single crisis communication mechanism was ever activated during the recent flurry of fast-moving and dangerous close maritime encounters among China, the United States, and the Philippines in the South China Sea.
The silence is telling. With the Trump administration’s high-profile re-entry into the South China Sea, and the unwillingness from both China and the Philippines to make compromises, this region is drifting further and further away from efforts to manage disputes and build guardrails. Instead, it is moving toward an entrenched competition of power and dominance.
The August 11 collision, the August 13 China-U.S. confrontation, and the China-Philippine aircraft close encounter all put the region’s crisis management mechanisms to the test – and all three parties failed. The failure to activate even the most basic crisis communication mechanisms amid such a volatile sequence of incidents is an alarming sign that this region is far from prepared for managing future flashpoints.
As deterrence postures harden and mutual trust further erodes, the risk is not just miscalculation but normalization of high-stake crises as the status quo. Without credible guardrails and steady, cool-headed calculation, it is only a matter of time before a broader crisis actually breaks out, with consequences neither side can easily walk back.
Renewed Presence, Rising Tensions: Trump’s South China Sea Policy Is Taking Shape
Since Marcos’ visit in July, the White House has begun to take a noticeably sharper – and more confrontational – stance on the South China Sea dispute.
https://thediplomat.com/2025/08/renewed-presence-rising-tensions-trumps-south-china-sea-policy-is-taking-shape/
By Mengzhen Liu
August 23, 2025
From left, the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) Parola-class patrol vessels BRP Suluan (MRRV-4406) and BRP Cabra (MRRV-4409), and the first-in-class Philippine Navy (PN) guided-missile frigate BRP Miguel Malvar (FFG-06) steam ahead of the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Curtis Wilbur (DDG 54) during Maritime Cooperative Activity in the South China Sea, July 16, 2025.
Credit: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Mark Bergado
When the Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. stood side by side with the U.S. President Donald Trump in the White House on July 22, the symbolic weight of the moment was lost on none. During what Trump described as a “beautiful visit,” the United States and the Philippines struck a lopsided trade deal, allowing U.S. goods to enter the Philippine market tariff-free, while goods from the Philippines would face a 19 percent tariff upon entering the U.S. market.
For Marcos, however, the true reward of the trip wasn’t the high-profile trade deal sealed in the Rose Garden, but something far more consequential to Manila’s long-term strategy: a personal promise from Trump to deepen Philippine-U.S. military cooperation. Marcos’ visit was a success – not just diplomatically, but strategically – in pulling Trump’s attention back to the simmering tensions in waters far from Washington, but close to home for the Philippines.
In the months leading up to Marcos’ visit to Washington, the South China Sea had all but disappeared from the radar of U.S. strategic attention. The Trump administration, entangled in a sweeping global trade war and laser-focused on negotiating a high-stakes peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, seemed content to let the simmering tensions between China and the Philippines drift into the background. However, since Marcos’ stop in Washington, the White House has begun to take a noticeably sharper — and more confrontational — stance on the South China Sea dispute, suggesting that the Philippine president may have succeeded in nudging the issue back onto Trump’s crowded foreign policy agenda.
Expanding Philippines-U.S. Defense Cooperation
Following Marcos’ visit to the United States, the Philippine-U.S.. defense cooperation is unfolding with remarkable momentum. A swift and decisive succession of high-level engagements and joint initiatives between the two countries’ defense departments is a reflection of the hardening of the alignment between the two allies
On August 7, Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Chief of Staff General Romeo Brawner met with U.S. Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo, and signed a rare “8-star memorandum” — a symbolic and substantive milestone in Philippines-U.S. military-to-military coordination. This was followed by another key meeting on August 15, when Philippine Army Commander Lt. Gen. Antonio Nafarrete held talks with senior officials from the Joint U.S. Military Assistance Group, aiming to enhance interoperability between both armies.
On August 14, the Philippines’ ambassador in Washington revealed that discussions over potential deployment of more missile launchers to the Philippines is underway. The U.S. Navy is also planning to build a fast boat facility that will be able to launch at least five boats, which was announced days prior to Marcos’ visit to the United States.
On August 18, U.S. defense giant Lockheed Martin announced a new collaboration with Southern Methodist University, in partnership with the Philippine academic and industrial institutions, to establish a local R&D hub in Manila to drive joint research, accelerate technological development, and cultivate domestic defense talent.
Together, these developments point to a shift of focus in the Philippine-U.S. strategic partnership – evolving from joint exercises and symbolic gestures into a more systemically integrated framework for sustained deterrence, enhanced interoperability, and local defense development. As tensions over flashpoints like Scarborough Shoal intensify, this deepening alignment would enable both Washington and Manila to respond with greater speed, coordination, and strategic focus.
“Peace Through Strength”: Philippine-U.S. Coordination in the South China Sea
In the meantime, a sharp uptick in U.S. military presence is taking place on the frontline of the China-Philippine maritime disputes in the South China Sea.
On August 13, two U.S. Navy destroyers – USS Higgins and USS Cincinnati – were deployed to the contested waters of the Scarborough Shoal. USS Higgins even sailed within 12 nautical miles of the shoal – waters that China has declared as its territorial sea. The Chinese military later announced that it had “driven away” the USS Higgins from the spot, and urged the United States to “effectively restrain its frontline troops.” Since Trump’s inauguration in January, this is the first time that the United States has taken a direct and forward approach in contesting China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea.
On the very same day, a Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) aircraft flew over the same location with foreign journalists onboard, prompting a reaction from the Chinese military, and resulting in a nearly 20-minute dangerous close encounter with a Chinese fighter jet, which reportedly closed to within only 61 meters of the Philippine plane at one point.
These two events came in just two days after the August 11 collision incident, where two Chinese vessels – China Coast Guard (CCG) 3104 and People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Guilin 164 – collided while chasing two Philippine ships away from the contested waters of Scarborough Shoal.
The almost simultaneous deployment of the U.S. naval and Philippine aerial assets over Scarborough Shoal – happening just two days after the collision between two Chinese vessels in the same location — can hardly be coincidental. It reflects a calculated move by both Washington and Manila to send a coordinated signal to Beijing. By projecting force precisely where tensions had just peaked, Manila and Washington are demonstrating a new level of strategic alignment, one that embodies a more muscular form of signaling. This is in line with Trump’s brand of “Peace Through Strength,” where credibility is measured by assertiveness.
However, with each show of force comes the heightened danger of miscalculation, escalation, and entrapment. While the Trump administration may view ambiguity as weakness and strength as the sole path to peace, such binary logic has left little room for diplomacy or de-escalation. In a region already fraught with overlapping claims and fragile trust, the current recalibration of the United States’ South China Sea policy risks fueling endless cycles of provocation and retaliation, instead of restoring balance. While strength may deter in the short term, it is unlikely to ensure long-term stability in the South China Sea without parallel efforts to manage tensions.
A Failed Test for Regional Crisis Management Mechanisms
In the span of just a few days, the South China Sea has witnessed an uncommon collision between Chinese vessels, a dangerous close encounter between a Chinese fighter jet and a PCG aircraft, and the most intense China-U.S. confrontation yet in the contested waters of Scarborough Shoal. Amid this rapid succession of crises, much attention has been devoted to the heated contest of strength – where each side seeks to overpower the other regardless of the risks, pushing discussions over de-escalation, crisis communication, and practical tension management further to the sidelines of the regional agenda.
In fact, the United States, China, and the Philippines have already established a comprehensive network of crisis communication, such as the China-Philippine Communication mechanism on maritime issues established by President Xi Jinping and Marcos in 2023, and the Notification of Major Military Activities Confidence-Building Measure Mechanism between China and the United States, which was established in 2014.
However, there is no indication that a single crisis communication mechanism was ever activated during the recent flurry of fast-moving and dangerous close maritime encounters among China, the United States, and the Philippines in the South China Sea.
The silence is telling. With the Trump administration’s high-profile re-entry into the South China Sea, and the unwillingness from both China and the Philippines to make compromises, this region is drifting further and further away from efforts to manage disputes and build guardrails. Instead, it is moving toward an entrenched competition of power and dominance.
The August 11 collision, the August 13 China-U.S. confrontation, and the China-Philippine aircraft close encounter all put the region’s crisis management mechanisms to the test – and all three parties failed. The failure to activate even the most basic crisis communication mechanisms amid such a volatile sequence of incidents is an alarming sign that this region is far from prepared for managing future flashpoints.
As deterrence postures harden and mutual trust further erodes, the risk is not just miscalculation but normalization of high-stake crises as the status quo. Without credible guardrails and steady, cool-headed calculation, it is only a matter of time before a broader crisis actually breaks out, with consequences neither side can easily walk back.
Authors
Guest Author
Mengzhen Liu
Mengzhen Liu is an assistant research fellow at the Huayang Center for Maritime Cooperation and Ocean Governance based in China. Her research interests include Chinese foreign policy, U.S.-China relations, and Southeast Asian politics. Mengzhen holds an M.A. degree in Asian Studies from Georgetown University.
18. Here’s what Russia and Ukraine have demanded to end the war
In short:
Territory
Neutrality and security guarantees
Sanctions relief
Return of civilians and soldiers
Here’s what Russia and Ukraine have demanded to end the war
Major questions remain over what both sides might accept after Trump held successive talks with Putin and Zelensky.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/08/19/russia-ukraine-peace-deal-trump-putin-zelensky/
Updated today at 3:09 p.m. EDT
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Monday. (Tom Brenner/The Washington Post)
By Sammy Westfall and Mary Ilyushina
Moscow and Kyiv remain far apart on the terms they would accept to end the war that began with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Amid a rapid run of diplomacy that included talks in mid-August between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, followed by a White House summit between Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders, the Russian leader has maintained maximalist conditions for any potential settlement to the bloodiest war in Europe since World War II.
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As a result, the two sides are at an impasse over key issues, including whether a ceasefire should be in place as negotiations precede, Russian demands that Ukraine cede territory and security guarantees for a postwar Ukraine.
After the Trump-Putin meeting on Aug. 15 in Alaska, which ended early without a deal, Trump said “many points were agreed to” and “very few” are left. After his subsequent meeting with Zelensky, he said peace was “within reach.”
‘No deal until there’s a deal’: Trump, Putin meet in Alaska
1:08
On Aug. 15, Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump briefly addressed the press after meeting for three hours in Anchorage. (Video: The Washington Post)
But he has given few details and it is unclear whether any progress was made.
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While meeting with Zelensky, Trump said he is trying to set up a direct meeting between Ukraine, Russia and the United States “as soon as we can.”
But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with NBC News, taped Aug. 22, that no meeting has been set between Putin and Zelensky. “Putin is ready to meet with Zelensky when the agenda is ready for a summit, and this agenda is not ready at all,” Lavrov said in the interview, which aired Sunday on “Meet the Press.”
Here is where Russia and Ukraine stand on a deal.
Territory
Three-and-a-half years into the war, Russia controls about one-fifth of Ukraine. Moscow says it wants to keep that and then some. The Kremlin has ruled out ceding any of the land it has seized.
Russia annexed Crimea, including Sevastopol, in 2014, although it remains internationally recognized as part of Ukraine. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, it has illegally annexed other regions, including all of Luhansk, much of Donetsk and large parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. But Ukraine continues to hold strategic territory in Donetsk.
In its June memorandum, Russia said a “key parameter” of a final settlement is the international legal recognition of the incorporation of all five of those regions into the Russian Federation.
In an essay published in 2021, Putin argued that Russia and Ukraine were “one people — a single whole” and that Ukrainian sovereignty was “possible only in partnership with Russia.” He accused the West of using Ukraine as an aggressive “anti-Russia project.”
Zelensky has long emphasized that Ukraine would not surrender sovereign territory. He said ahead of his meeting with Trump that the issue of territory is so important it should only be discussed “at the trilateral — Ukraine, the U.S., Russia.”
Trump said after meeting with Zelensky in August that “we need to discuss the possible exchange of territory,” while taking into account the current war lines. Swapping land to Russia remains unpopular in Ukraine and would pose constitutional challenges.
Russia’s terms also include demilitarizing Ukraine, which would leave the country with a small army incapable of deterring future attacks. Moscow’s demands as of June included establishing a maximum number of Ukrainian armed forces, weapons “and their permissible characteristics.”
The Kremlin also said it would need confirmation that Ukraine did not possess and would not accept nuclear weapons.
Ukraine gave up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons in 1994, in exchange for security guarantees from Russia that have not borne out.
Neutrality and security guarantees
To justify his aggression in Ukraine, Putin cited the possibility of further expansion of NATO. Ukrainian membership in NATO, a defense alliance that requires member states to defend fellow members if they are attacked, is anathema for Putin.
In June, Russia said a key parameter of a peace agreement would be the “neutrality of Ukraine,” a refusal to join military alliances and coalitions, as well as international treaties that break neutrality.
Zelensky has said he sees eventual Ukrainian membership in the alliance as a key security guarantee. Ahead of his meeting at the White House meeting, Zelensky also said he “consider[s] E.U. accession to be part of security guarantees.”
Zelensky, E.U. chief united ahead of Trump meeting
1:48
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented a united front on Aug. 17. (Video: Reuters)
In a social media post on Aug. 17, Trump said that for Ukraine, there is “no getting back” Crimea and “NO GOING INTO NATO.”
“Some things never change!!!” Trump said.
NATO is larger than it was before the war began; Sweden and Finland were spurred to join. But U.S. commitment to the alliance has increasingly come into question under Trump.
During the war, Russia has framed itself as fighting an existential battle against the “collective West” because of NATO’s support for Kyiv in its fight against Russia.
Under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, if a member country is attacked, other alliance members will consider it an armed attack on all members and take appropriate action.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump at a joint news conference in Alaska on Friday. (Jae C. Hong/AP)
U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff told Fox News a day ahead of Zelensky’s White House visit that the United States is “potentially prepared to be able to give Article 5 security guarantees, but not from NATO — directly from the United States and other European countries,” with the United States in a supporting role.
Witkoff said Putin agreed to “robust security guarantees” while meeting with Trump, although Russia did not make public specific concessions.
After meeting with Trump on Monday, Zelensky said the U.S. and European leaders discussed security guarantees.
As of June, the Kremlin had ruled out the presence of foreign peacekeepers in Ukraine — especially from NATO countries. It said a peace agreement would require a ban on military activity of third states on the territory of Ukraine.
Sanctions relief
U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia by the Biden administration have weakened the Russian economy and hindered its military sector. Trump has signaled a willingness to discuss easing sanctions as part of a peace deal.
Publicly, the Kremlin maintains that all sanctions are illegal and must be lifted. Privately, however, Moscow, would welcome any relief from U.S. sanctions, as it would undermine Western unity in enforcing economic restrictions, according to analysts. Russia is particularly interested in lifting restrictions on transnational payments, and the sale of gas and oil.
In its June memorandum, the Kremlin said it required a “gradual restoration” of diplomatic and economic relations with third countries. It also asked for the lifting of all economic sanctions between Russia and Ukraine.
In a trade spat with India, Trump has pressured the country to stop buying Russian oil.
One of the most significant measures Russia faced was the freezing of over $300 billion in Russian central bank assets held in the West. The European Union last year adopted a plan to use the interest generated from these frozen assets to support Ukraine.
Last year, Putin condemned this strategy as “theft.” Paris has proposed using the assets as collateral, allowing them to be seized if Moscow were to violate a potential ceasefire agreement.
In its June memorandum, the Kremlin said an agreement would require a “waiver of mutual claims” in connection with “damage caused in military operations.”
Return of civilians and soldiers
Zelensky said a key part of a deal would be the return of thousands of abducted children to Ukraine.
“This should be one of our main priorities also in these negotiations to make sure that the children come back to Ukraine to their families,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said at the White House meeting with Zelensky.
Zelensky also said he wants to bring home imprisoned soldiers and civilians, including journalists.
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged hundreds of prisoners in swaps over the last few months.
What readers are saying
The comments overwhelmingly express skepticism and criticism towards Russia's territorial demands and President Trump's handling of the situation. Many commenters emphasize that Russia's demands are unacceptable and that Ukraine should not concede any territory. There is a strong... Show more
This summary is AI-generated. AI can make mistakes and this summary is not a replacement for reading the comments.
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By Sammy Westfall
Sammy Westfall is a breaking news reporter on The Washington Post's International desk.follow on X@sammy_westfall
By Mary Ilyushina
Mary Ilyushina, a reporter on the Foreign Desk of The Washington Post, covers Russia and the region. She began her career in independent Russian media before joining CNN’s Moscow bureau as a field producer in 2017. She has been with The Post since 2021. She speaks Russian, English, Ukrainian and Arabic.follow on X@maryilyushina
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
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