Rnews Crooked Bough News Round-up: Responsible State Craft

Responsible State Craft

— 'Devastating' Arab stalemate over what 'to do' about Gaza: at 4/29/25 10:05pm
The latest round of Gaza ceasefire negotiations in Cairo encapsulates the agonizing paradox gripping the devastated enclave. Even as Egyptian security sources signaled a "significant breakthrough" towards a long-term truce on April 28, and a Hamas delegation departed after "intensive talks," the familiar impasse quickly reasserted itself. Israeli officials promptly denied any progress, Qatari mediators confirmed advances but no agreement on ending the 18-month-old war, and Hamas reiterated its refusal to disarm – a non-negotiable point for Israel. The flurry of diplomatic activity masks fundamentally irreconcilable visions for Gaza's future, not only between Israel and the Palestinians but, critically, among the key Arab states themselves. While mediators shuttle between capitals, Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pursues indefinite military control, buoyed by a seemingly permissive Trump administration. Israel's position, articulated clearly by Netanyahu and his government, forms one pole of this impasse. The official war aims – destroying Hamas and freeing hostages – remain operationally contradictory, yet Israel's actions prioritize the former. Netanyahu explicitly rules out Palestinian Authority (PA) governance in Gaza and insists that Israel must maintain overarching security control "over the entire area west of the Jordan River," rendering any Palestinian state less than sovereign. This stance is reinforced by far-right coalition partners pushing for mass displacement and the dissolution of the PA. Against this hardline Israeli stance, the Arab world presents a fractured landscape of competing visions over Hamas and Gaza’s political future. At the diplomatic nexus lies Egypt, performing a precarious balancing act. Driven by the existential fear of inheriting millions of displaced Palestinians – a nightmare scenario given historical traumas and the ongoing Sudanese refugee crisis – Cairo’s primary goal is stability and preventing demographic shifts. Its policy is thus pragmatic: despite President Sisi’s own history of crushing political Islam domestically, it maintains communication channels with Hamas, the de facto power it must deal with as mediator.Egypt prioritizes reopening the Rafah crossing under Palestinian control to manage aid and facilitate the return of Gazans currently stranded in Egypt, where their legal status is precarious and they receive only limited support. Cairo’s ambitious $53 billion Gaza reconstruction plan, envisaging an interim technocratic committee excluding Hamas before a potential PA return, aimed to counter Trump's displacement scheme and preserve a path to Palestinian statehood. Yet, this plan floundered against Israeli rejection and U.S. indifference. Egypt neverthless persists in mediation, seeking an elusive intra-Palestinian deal, but its leverage is constrained by regional rivalries and its own economic fragility.In sharp contrast stands the United Arab Emirates (UAE), whose approach is shaped by an ideological commitment to eradicating political Islam and advancing its regional influence through the Abraham Accords framework. The UAE views Hamas, a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot, as an entity to be eliminated, not engaged. The UAE’s stance towards Hamas manifests primarily through stringent pre-conditions for reconstruction aid — which demand the group's exclusion from power, a position revealed more through diplomatic channels than public overtures.Reports indicate the UAE actively lobbied the Trump administration to torpedo Egypt's reconstruction plan, deeming it too accommodating of Hamas. Central to the Emirati vision is Mohammed Dahlan, the former Fatah security chief in Gaza and Abbas rival exiled in Abu Dhabi. With a history of antagonism towards Hamas and close ties to the Emirati president, Mohammed bin Zayed, Dahlan represents the strongman figure the UAE hopes will govern a post-Hamas Gaza, potentially in coordination with Israel. Despite Dahlan's minimal popularity among Palestinians, the UAE promotes him as a viable option, leveraging its financial muscle and Washington connections. Jordan, bordering the West Bank and home to a large Palestinian population, views the crisis as an existential threat. The specter of mass displacement, the "alternative homeland" scenario long feared in Amman, is a red line uniting the monarchy, the opposition, and the public. King Abdullah II emphatically rejected Trump's resettlement proposals, despite facing the awkward pressure of a publicly televised White House meeting where Trump linked U.S. aid (already partially frozen) to Jordan's compliance. Jordan navigates a treacherous path: upholding its U.S. alliance and its peace treaty with Israel while facing intense domestic anger over perceived complicity in Israeli actions and U.S. policy. This pressure intensified after the opposition Islamic Action Front (IAF), the Muslim Brotherhood's political arm, made significant gains in the 2024 elections. However, in April, potentially under pressure from Saudi Arabia and the UAE or seeking favour with Israel and the Trump administration, Jordan banned the Muslim Brotherhood, accusing it of plotting instability and raiding IAF headquarters. This crackdown aligns with Jordan’s own proposal to exile thousands of Hamas members and disarm the group to facilitate a PA return, combining its anti-displacement stance with a clear anti-Hamas position. Qatar, meanwhile, plays a uniquely complex game. As Hamas's long-term host (since 2012, with U.S. acquiescence) and a key financial supporter of Gaza (often with past Israeli consent), Doha insists engagement with Hamas is indispensable for mediation and eventual peace. It leverages its position as host of the vital U.S. Al Udeid air base and Major Non-NATO Ally status to maintain influence in D.C. while simultaneously engaging Hamas – which Washington formally designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) in 1997 – and other U.S. adversaries, notably Iran, creating a delicate, high-stakes balancing act.Its state-funded Al Jazeera network provides critical, albeit controversial, coverage of Gaza, drawing accusations from Israel of collusion with Hamas and leading to the outlet’s ban by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank. While more open to Hamas's inclusion in the broader Palestinian political landscape compared to the UAE or Jordan, Qatar’s primary role remains that of a facilitator constrained by the conflicting demands it mediates.Saudi Arabia firmly links any normalization with Israel to the establishment of a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, vehemently rejecting Netanyahu’s inflammatory suggestion of creating a Palestinian state within Saudi territory. Its opposition to Iranian-backed militias like Hamas and Hezbollah aligns with its broader regional strategy favoring state institutions. Saudi-owned media initially labeled Hamas leaders as "terrorists," but subsequently softened its tone, particularly after provocative remarks from Netanyahu and Trump regarding displacement. This media shift, while not a formal policy change, suggests tactical flexibility. The Kingdom endorsed the Egyptian-led Arab League plan as a counter to Trump's proposals and maintains that lasting peace requires a two-state solution. Its position remains pragmatic: recognizing Hamas's spoiling power while insisting on its eventual disarmament and PA governance as part of a comprehensive settlement tied to Palestinian statehood.Caught within this maelstrom are the Palestinians themselves. Hamas, though battered, demonstrates resilience, reportedly regrouping and prepared to continue fighting. Its leadership signals openness to ceding governance but maintains disarmament as a red line, which is unacceptable to Israel, the UAE, and Jordan. The PA under Mahmoud Abbas remains weak, plagued by internal divisions, perceived corruption, and a lack of legitimacy, exacerbated by Abbas's own vitriolic denunciations of Hamas, whom he recently called “sons of dogs.” This deep Fatah-Hamas schism prevents the emergence of a unified leadership capable of commanding broad support, further complicating any "day after" scenario.The endgame in Gaza is thus gridlocked by these competing, often contradictory, agendas. Egypt and Qatar mediate within tight constraints. Jordan defends its red line against displacement while now cracking down on Islamists at home, signaling disapproval of a future role for Hamas in Gaza. The UAE pursues a Dahlan-led, Hamas-free outcome aligned with its anti-Islamist drive. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, leverages normalization prospects for statehood demands, bolstering its leadership credentials in the Islamic world as custodian of the holy mosques, while maintaining room for tactical flexibility. While strategically opposing Hamas's dominance, it appears willing to leverage the group's continued relevance as an instrument to signal displeasure to aggressive remarks from Israeli officials.Meanwhile, Israel, under a leadership perhaps politically invested in perpetual conflict, pursues military dominance and indefinite control. The United States under Trump offers inconsistent signals while failing to impose a coherent path forward. The result is a devastating stalemate, where irreconcilable visions condemn Gaza to ruins and its people to a future trapped between destruction and despair.
[Category: Israel, Gaza war, Enewsletter, Arab states, Gulf states, Saudi arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Jordan, Gaza]
— Symposium: Was the Vietnam War a mistake or fatal flaw in the system?: at 4/29/25 10:05pm
The photographs, television images and newspaper stories make it perfectly clear: there was an urgency, a frenzy even, as the U.S. Embassy in Saigon shuttered and its diplomats and staff were evacuated, along with other military, journalists, and foreigners, as well as thousands of Vietnamese civilians, who all wanted out of the country as the North Vietnamese victors rolled into the city center.It was April 30, 1975 — 50 years ago today — yet the nightmare left behind that day only accentuated the failure of the United States, along with the South Vietnamese army, to resist a takeover by the communists under the leadership of the North. It was not only an extraordinarily bloody chapter for Vietnam (well over 1.5 million military and civilian deaths, depending on estimates, from 1965 to 1975), but a dark episode for America, too.Beyond the failure of Washington’s Cold War policy — that intervening in Vietnam’s post-Colonial struggles for independence was necessary to prevent the “dominoes” of communism from tumbling across Southeast Asia — more than 55,000 Americans were killed. An untold number who returned suffered lifelong injuries, impacts of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and illnesses and other symptoms due to Agent Orange and other toxic exposures. The nation had been ruptured politically and socially over the war, a divide that one could say has never really healed. Yet ironically, Washington’s proclivity to intervene in other countries’ affairs and to use military power as the first resort has only grown. It would seem the true lessons of Vietnam were left on that iconic rooftop from which the last helicopter left Saigon 50 years ago. Some say after WWII, U.S. power and intervention has maintained the global liberal order and that Vietnam was a “mistake” — a one-off. Others say it was a sign that the pretense of America as the "indispensable nation” was folly from the beginning, that the Cold War had blinded us to the realities of the world and the limits of military intervention.So we asked experts, both in geopolitics and history, what they think:Was the failure of Vietnam a feature or a bug of U.S. foreign policy after WWII?***Andrew Bacevich; Greg Daddis; Carolyn Eisenberg; Morton H. Halperin; Steve Kinzer; Noah Kulwin; Robert Levering; Anatol Lieven; Daniel McCarthy; Robert Merry; Paul Pillar; Tim Shorrock; Monica Duffy Toft; Stephen Walt; Cora Weiss***Andrew Bacevich, co-founder and Emeritus Board Chair of the Quincy InstituteThe United States has yet to reckon fully with the causes and consequences of the Vietnam War. Why? Because American foreign policy elites have spent the last 50 years engaged in a concerted effort to evade their responsibility for that disaster. Their success in doing so helps explain the dubious record of U.S. policy since. Yesterday's mistakes become the basis for tomorrow's actions. Greg Daddis, director of the Center of War and Society at San Diego State University, and board member at the Quincy InstituteAmericans came home from World War II with a faith in their power — and, increasingly, in their responsibility — to maintain a stable international order in the wake of such a catastrophic global conflict. That faith was coupled with fears of a growing communist threat, a threat seemingly existential to policymakers and ordinary citizens alike. These universalizing fears, coupled with a faith in military power’s transformative capacities overseas, ultimately would lead the United States to embark upon its misguided Southeast Asian crusade. Yet this wasn’t a “one-off.” Throughout the Cold War, the American policy elite committed the nation to conflicts that, far from furthering U.S. national security interests, only brought death and misery to peoples abroad. They feared the potentially toxic mixture of self-determination and communism as emerging nations grappled with new identities in the postcolonial era. And they held faith, even in the face of contrary evidence, that war created a safer global environment in its destructive aftermath.Carolyn Eisenberg, author of “Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast Asia” Lessons not learned. Absent a “truth commission” or some recognized official proceeding, the most egregious American attitudes and behaviors associated with the Vietnam War were never properly addressed. The conviction that the U.S. has a right to violently shape the internal life of foreign nations, that our “national security” depends on military dominance, and that lying to the public is a necessary feature of governance, never disappeared. Left intact was a governmental apparatus oriented to war, and procedures which anesthetized officials to the human costs of their decisions. Under the rubric of “complexity,” the sacrifice of millions of Asians and tens of thousands of American soldiers, became clouded for subsequent generations. And while adjustments were made, the habit of military intervention remained — from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and elsewhere. We currently see its precipitate, from Democratic and Republican administrations, as the U.S. bombs Yemen, and enables Israel’s massacre of Palestinian children.Morton H. Halperin is an American expert on foreign policy and civil libertiesThe American military intervention in Vietnam and its failure was a bug and not a feature of U.S. foreign policy after WWII. In deciding whether to intervene in armed conflicts abroad in the period after World War II, the United States was guided by the Truman Doctrine which said that we would “support free peoples resisting subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressure.”This was a commitment to support local efforts not to replace them or to intervene in all conflicts. The United States stayed out of the Chinese civil war and ceded Soviet control of Eastern Europe while supporting the Greek and Korean resistance to communist control.The disastrous American intervention in Vietnam should have taught us that we should only consider intervention when we are supporting people struggling for their freedom. This principle is key to understanding why the American intervention in Afghanistan was such a disaster and why we must help defend Ukraine.Steve Kinzer, Senior Fellow in International and Public Affairs, Brown UniversityAmerica’s war in Vietnam was not an aberration. It reflected a key fact of American history: domestic politics shapes our foreign policy. The United States refused to accept the 1954 Geneva accord that would have settled the Vietnam question peacefully. President Eisenhower feared that doing so would, as his press secretary James Hagerty put it, “give the Democrats a chance to say that we sat idly by and let Indochina be sold down the river to the Communists.” A decade later, Lyndon Johnson concluded that Congress would never approve his Great Society programs if he pulled troops out of Vietnam: “They won’t be talking about my civil rights bill or education or beautification. No, sir. They’ll be pushing Vietnam up my ass every time.”Washington helped create the Cold War narrative that Americans came to accept. That narrative wound up limiting presidents’ ability to make difficult foreign policy decisions.Noah Kulwin, writer and co-host of “Blowback” podcastThe U.S. war on Vietnam could not have ended in any way other than failure. The collapse of our South Vietnamese client; the strategic pointlessness of our air campaign; the breakdown of order among infantry, airmen and sailors; the arms industry gravy train; the list of causes is endless. But the striking resemblance between how that war failed and how wars since have failed must be observed. In Iraq, but most of all in Afghanistan. That the U.S. has lost wars in the same way for a half-century suggests a pattern — not an aberration.Robert Levering, Executive Producer of “The Movement and the ‘Madman’”I was of draft age during the Vietnam war. So, U.S. foreign policy was an intensely personal matter for me. I gradually became clear that I could not fight in an unjust and immoral war and decided to resist the draft and become a fulltime antiwar organizer. At the time, I thought the Vietnam war was just a horrible mistake. The Iraq and Afghan wars and the constant American involvement in conflicts throughout the world since then have convinced me otherwise. I now see the Vietnam war as only a symptom of America's systemic commitment to global military domination since World War II.By chance, I've spent the last two weeks in Vietnam. I've been seeing the real-world implications. Among other things, I've seen the site of the My Lai massacre and a rehab center for children of the fourth generation of Agent Orange victims.Anatol Lieven, director of the Eurasia program at the Quincy InstituteTragically, the failures of the U.S. in Vietnam were due to persistent features of U.S. policymaking culture that contributed heavily to the disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine, and will, if not addressed, recur in future. The first is a failure to seriously study other countries. This led for many years to a disastrous blindness to the power of Vietnamese nationalism. Instead, you have ideological stereotyping, leading to a division of the world into giant blocs of friends and enemies, from the “Communist Bloc” through the “Axis of Evil” to today’s supposed “Alliance of Autocrats.” Finally, there is the unlovely combination of humanitarian rhetoric with brutal indifference to the lives of the real people on the ground that are the objects of U.S. strategy. Vietnamese, Cambodians, Central Americans, Africans, Kurds, Afghans and Iraqis have all been used in this way. Today, it is the Ukrainians’ turn.Daniel McCarthy, vice president for the Collegiate Network at the Intercollegiate Studies InstituteThe Vietnam conflict was over as a war by the time I was born in the late 1970s, but during my lifetime the Vietnam era has never really ended. Neither the superficial success of the 1991 Persian Gulf War nor the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America’s own soil erased the Vietnam experience as the defining narrative of what it means for our country to go to war under modern conditions. All our wars are still Vietnams. Our Indochinese quagmire began with threat inflation — “domino theory” — and a refusal to acknowledge that we didn’t have enough support among the people we were trying to “save” to win a war against native opponents. Threat inflation, domino theories — the latest says that if Putin takes the Donbas, he’ll surely take Tallinn then Paris then London — and ignorance of local attitudes remain the hallmarks of U.S. interventionism today, as does the use of overwhelming firepower as a substitute for rather than a plausible means to victory. Vietnam syndrome has never been cured because our leaders persist in the same behaviors that brought it on half a century ago, and they reap the same results. With every war they renew the lessons of Vietnam.Robert Merry, author of “Where they Stand: The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians” America’s Vietnam misadventure was not a policy aberration but a natural and probably inevitable product of the country’s Cold War mentality. By January 1949 the West had won the war’s first phase, the struggle for Europe. The continent was now fortified against a Russian invasion. But a new era quickly emerged, characterized by East Bloc efforts to probe and drive against the vulnerable colonial flanks and strategic assets of the West, in China, Southeast Asia, Korea, Egypt, and wherever Western weakness was discerned. America took the bait, but not because its leaders were fools. They were being consistent with the country’s perception of the protracted struggle they faced. In many ways, though, it was a mug’s game, forcing upon America multiple challenges at once, of Soviet choosing. But in a bipolar world on the edge of conflict, such challenges had to be confronted. That leaves execution as the big question.Paul Pillar, non-resident fellow of the Quincy Institute and non-resident senior fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown UniversityThe military tragedy in Vietnam grew directly out of attitudes central to the Cold War, the dominant framework of U.S. foreign policy in the half century following World War II. The Viet Minh/Viet Cong campaign was seen not for what it really was — the continuation of a nationalist, anti-colonial struggle — but instead as part of a worldwide communist advance led by Moscow and Beijing. That perception led to the erroneous assumptions underlying the U.S. military intervention, including that a communist victory would cause other countries to fall like dominoes and that a U.S. failure to show resolve in Vietnam would lead to other setbacks elsewhere in the world. The mistakes cannot be blamed on excessive optimism, since even those policymakers who held gloomy views about the intervention thought the U.S. had to make the effort. Nor can they be blamed on any shortcuts in the policymaking process.Tim Shorrock, Washington-based journalistThe "failure of Vietnam," or what I would call the "liberation of Vietnam," was most definitely a feature of U.S. foreign policy that grew out of the aggressive Cold War tactics carried out by the Truman and Eisenhower administrations soon after World War II. This was especially true in Asia. To defeat anti-colonial, independence movements and ensure pro-American, anticommunist regimes, U.S. leaders allied themselves with a motley crew of fascists and collaborators with Japanese colonialism, starting with the far-right in Southern Korea and then Japan itself. That created the conditions for the Korean War against North Korea and Revolutionary China, which inspired Truman to block the Taiwan straits, send the first U.S. military aid to the French in Vietnam, and unleash the CIA as the cops of the world. Vietnam did not want to be part of a French or American empire. We were on the wrong side; they won.Monica Duffy Toft, non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute and Professor of International Politics at Tufts UniversityThe failure in Vietnam was a feature — not a bug. American leaders have repeatedly failed to internalize history. In Vietnam — again in Afghanistan — they underestimated the power of nationalism and the resilience of guerrilla warfare. Since the rise of modern nationalism, strong states have increasingly struggled to defeat weaker opponents fighting for their homeland. These adversaries are often defending existential interests, while the United States tends to fight in peripheral theaters with few vital interests at stake. In Afghanistan, the U.S. achieved its core military objectives by December 2001 — destroying al-Qaida’s sanctuary and removing the Taliban from power. Yet rather than recognize success, the mission creeped into nation-building, committing the U.S. to 20 years of costly engagement. Vietnam and Afghanistan thus reflect a persistent flaw in U.S. strategy: conflating military victory with political transformation and the mistaken belief that foreign societies can be remade through prolonged and externally driven intervention.Stephen Walt, board member at the Quincy Institute, Robert and Professor of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy SchoolVietnam exemplifies most of the pathologies that have undermined U.S. foreign policy for decades. It was justified by threat-inflation and dubious ideas like the domino theory. U.S. policymakers were trying to use massive amounts of military force to remake a society whose history, culture, and national sentiments that they did not understand. They relied on corrupt and incompetent local clients, concealed basic truths about the war from the American people, and refused to raise taxes to pay for the war. The leaders who mismanaged this debacle were never held accountable and remained leading players in the establishment for the rest of their lives. Finally, the country learned little from this bitter experience, and repeated these same errors in Iraq, Afghanistan, and several other places.”Cora Weiss, peace activist, organizer of the November 15, 1969 anti-war march on the National MallThe U.S. government took on the mantle of political and military interventions after World War II. The decade long Vietnam War was one of many — not an aberration. To diminish the likelihood and horrors of U.S. interventions, civil society must know and utilize its power. During the Vietnam War, in addition to marches to end the war, civil society provided some measure of direct relief to POWs. The anti-war movement sent me and two other women to work with the Vietnam Women’s Union to establish a channel for mail and packages to POWs. This resulted in an accurate list of prisoners, confirmed their treatment, and eventually allowed us to bring three prisoners home. To constrain and eventually overturn America’s impulse to rule the world by force, we must put peace education into our curriculum, teach diplomacy, and embrace UNSC Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security.
[Category: Vietnam war, Fall of saigon, Vietnam, Foreign intervention, Us foreign policy, Enewsletter, Symposium]
— Global powers boost military budgets by record percent: at 4/28/25 10:05pm
2024 marked biggest increase in global military spending since Cold War’s end.Spurred by ongoing wars in Europe and the Middle East, global military spending rose nearly 10 percent in 2024, the biggest annual increase since at least the end of the Cold War more than 30 years ago, according to the latest in the annual series of reports on world military spending by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, or SIPRI.Altogether, the world spent more than $2.7 trillion dollars on their militaries last year, a 9.4 percent increase from 2023. While the United States remained the world’s biggest military spender by far, at $997 billion, Washington accounted for 37 percent of total global military expenditures in 2024 – a number of other countries made extraordinary increases in their military budgets, far greater than the 5.7% increase in spending by the U.S.The war in Ukraine and Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon accounted for the greatest increases.Russia’s military spending rose by 38 percent compared to 2023, reaching an estimated $149 billion in 2024. That was double the amount it spent in 2015, according to SIPRI.Military spending by Ukraine, backed by the U.S. and other NATO members, increased at a far more modest rate, at 2.9%, to total $64.7 billion, or less than half of Moscow’s expenditures. But that constituted 34% of Kyiv’s total GDP, the world’s largest military burden expressed as a percentage of total national production.The Ukraine war also had much broader impacts on military spending in Europe. Germany’s military budget rose by a whopping 28% in 2024 to reach $88.5 billion, propelling it to fourth in the rankings for the world’s biggest military spenders behind the U.S., China, and Russia and, for the first time, the top spot in Western Europe.Indeed, all NATO member states increased their military spending in 2024, to a total of $1.505 billion, or 55% of total global military expenditures, according to the report. Of that total, European members spent $454 billion, or 30% of the alliance’s total spending. The biggest increase was in Poland, whose military budget grew 31%, to $38 billion, or 4.2% of its GDP, the highest percentage in the alliance. New NATO member Sweden increased its military budget by 34%, to $12 billion. France also increased defense spending, by 6.1%, to $64.7 billion.“The latest policies adopted in Germany and many other European countries suggest that Europe has entered a period of high and increasing military spending that is likely to continue for the foreseeable future,” noted Lorenzo Scarazzato, a researcher with SIPRI’s Military Expenditure and Arms Production Program.Increases in military spending in the Middle East were almost entirely focused on Israel’s wars against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, according to the report. Its military budget increased by nearly two-thirds (65%) to $46.5 billion in 2024, the biggest annual rise since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. That total amounted to 8.8% of its GDP, the world’s second highest burden after Ukraine.Lebanon also increased its military spending significantly, by 58%, although its total military budget, $635 million, came to a tiny fraction of Israel’s. While spending by the other predominantly Arab states remained relatively static during 2024, Iran’s military budget actually fell by 10% in real terms to $7.9 billion (or less than a quarter of Israel’s budget), in part due to the impact of economic sanctions, according to the report.Overall, military spending in the Middle East came to $243 billion for the year, an increase of 15% over 2023. Saudi Arabia, the region’s traditional biggest spender on defense equipment, retained its title with military spending reaching $80.3 billion, a slight increase of 1.5% over 2023. It ranked seventh in total military spending in 2024, behind Germany, India, and the United Kingdom.Military budgets in Asia and the Pacific rose amid heightened global and regional tensions, reaching $629 billion for the year, an increase of 6.3%, the largest year-to-year increase since 2009, according to the report.With the world’s second biggest defense budget, China accounted for about half the total for the region with an estimated budget of $314 billion, an increase of seven percent over 2023. Japan’s military budget rose even more, by 21%, to $55.3 billion, which SIPRI said was the largest annual increase since 1952. That amounted to 1.4% of GDP, low by NATO standards, but the highest since 1958. Meanwhile, Taiwan’s military budget grew by nearly two percent, to $16.5 billion, while India, with the world’s fifth largest military budget, increased its spending by 1.6% to $86.1 billion.“Major military spenders in the Asia-Pacific region are investing increasing resources into advanced military capabilities,” said Nan Tian, who directs the Military Expenditure program. “With several unresolved disputes and mounting tensions, these investments risk sending the region into a dangerous arms-race spiral.”The nations of both Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa were generally far more restrained in their military spending. Military spending in the latter totaled $21.9 billion, a decrease of 3.2% from the previous year. The report found that military budgets in three of the region’s biggest spenders — South Africa, Nigeria, and Ethiopia — fell for the year.Military spending in South America remained stable overall in 2024 at $53.6 billion, although Colombia increased its budget in part due to the failure of peace talks with a rebel faction, and Guyana increased its budget by 78% to $202 million amid renewed claims by Venezuela to the oil-rich Essequibo region. A dramatic 39% increase in Mexico’s defense budget to nearly $20 billion to fight organized crime was the most notable change in the greater Central American region.
[Category: China, Russia, India, European union, Military, Pentagon budget]
— Global powers boost military budgets: at 4/28/25 10:05pm
2024 marked biggest increase in global military spending since Cold War’s end.Spurred by ongoing wars in Europe and the Middle East, global military spending rose nearly 10 percent in 2024, the biggest annual increase since at least the end of the Cold War more than 30 years ago, according to the latest in the annual series of reports on world military spending by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, or SIPRI.Altogether, the world spent more than $2.7 trillion dollars on their militaries last year, a 9.4 percent increase from 2023. While the United States remained the world’s biggest military spender by far, at $997 billion, Washington accounted for 37 percent of total global military expenditures in 2024 – a number of other countries made extraordinary increases in their military budgets, far greater than the 5.7% increase in spending by the U.S.The war in Ukraine and Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon accounted for the greatest increases.Russia’s military spending rose by 38 percent compared to 2023, reaching an estimated $149 billion in 2024. That was double the amount it spent in 2015, according to SIPRI.Military spending by Ukraine, backed by the U.S. and other NATO members, increased at a far more modest rate, at 2.9%, to total $64.7 billion, or less than half of Moscow’s expenditures. But that constituted 34% of Kyiv’s total GDP, the world’s largest military burden expressed as a percentage of total national production.The Ukraine war also had much broader impacts on military spending in Europe. Germany’s military budget rose by a whopping 28% in 2024 to reach $88.5 billion, propelling it to fourth in the rankings for the world’s biggest military spenders behind the U.S., China, and Russia and, for the first time, the top spot in Western Europe.Indeed, all NATO member states increased their military spending in 2024, to a total of $1.505 billion, or 55% of total global military expenditures, according to the report. Of that total, European members spent $454 billion, or 30% of the alliance’s total spending. The biggest increase was in Poland, whose military budget grew 31%, to $38 billion, or 4.2% of its GDP, the highest percentage in the alliance. New NATO member Sweden increased its military budget by 34%, to $12 billion. France also increased defense spending, by 6.1%, to $64.7 billion.“The latest policies adopted in Germany and many other European countries suggest that Europe has entered a period of high and increasing military spending that is likely to continue for the foreseeable future,” noted Lorenzo Scarazzato, a researcher with SIPRI’s Military Expenditure and Arms Production Program.Increases in military spending in the Middle East were almost entirely focused on Israel’s wars against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, according to the report. Its military budget increased by nearly two-thirds (65%) to $46.5 billion in 2024, the biggest annual rise since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. That total amounted to 8.8% of its GDP, the world’s second highest burden after Ukraine.Lebanon also increased its military spending significantly, by 58%, although its total military budget, $635 million, came to a tiny fraction of Israel’s. While spending by the other predominantly Arab states remained relatively static during 2024, Iran’s military budget actually fell by 10% in real terms to $7.9 billion (or less than a quarter of Israel’s budget), in part due to the impact of economic sanctions, according to the report.Overall, military spending in the Middle East came to $243 billion for the year, an increase of 15% over 2023. Saudi Arabia, the region’s traditional biggest spender on defense equipment, retained its title with military spending reaching $80.3 billion, a slight increase of 1.5% over 2023. It ranked seventh in total military spending in 2024, behind Germany, India, and the United Kingdom.Military budgets in Asia and the Pacific rose amid heightened global and regional tensions, reaching $629 billion for the year, an increase of 6.3%, the largest year-to-year increase since 2009, according to the report.With the world’s second biggest defense budget, China accounted for about half the total for the region with an estimated budget of $314 billion, an increase of seven percent over 2023. Japan’s military budget rose even more, by 21%, to $55.3 billion, which SIPRI said was the largest annual increase since 1952. That amounted to 1.4% of GDP, low by NATO standards, but the highest since 1958. Meanwhile, Taiwan’s military budget grew by nearly two percent, to $16.5 billion, while India, with the world’s fifth largest military budget, increased its spending by 1.6% to $86.1 billion.“Major military spenders in the Asia-Pacific region are investing increasing resources into advanced military capabilities,” said Nan Tian, who directs the Military Expenditure program. “With several unresolved disputes and mounting tensions, these investments risk sending the region into a dangerous arms-race spiral.”The nations of both Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa were generally far more restrained in their military spending. Military spending in the latter totaled $21.9 billion, a decrease of 3.2% from the previous year. The report found that military budgets in three of the region’s biggest spenders — South Africa, Nigeria, and Ethiopia — fell for the year.Military spending in South America remained stable overall in 2024 at $53.6 billion, although Colombia increased its budget in part due to the failure of peace talks with a rebel faction, and Guyana increased its budget by 78% to $202 million amid renewed claims by Venezuela to the oil-rich Essequibo region. A dramatic 39% increase in Mexico’s defense budget to nearly $20 billion to fight organized crime was the most notable change in the greater Central American region.
[Category: China, Russia, India, European union, Military, Pentagon budget]
— Can Trump cool Turkey-Israel tensions over Syria?: at 4/28/25 10:05pm
Soon after Syria experienced its Arab Spring uprising in 2011 and slid into a gruesome civil war, the country became a battleground for Russia, Iran, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah supporting the former regime on one side, and Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey backing rebel groups on the other. Since Bashar al-Assad’s ouster late last year, however, dynamics have shifted, transforming Syria into an arena of Turkish-Israeli competition. A major source of tension between Turkey and Israel stems from the former’s desire to see Syria emerge as a strong, unitary state with a Turkey-oriented government in Damascus while the latter wants Syria permanently weak and divided along ethno-sectarian lines.The Israeli government’s perspective is that Turkey’s growing clout in post-Ba’ath Syria poses a grave threat to the Jewish state. At the start of this year, an Israeli government committee that assesses regional security issues put out a report warning that Syria’s new Sunni Islamist authorities might pose a graver threat to Israeli security than Syria did under Assad. The committee considered the possibility of the new Damascus government becoming a "proxy" of Ankara, citing “Turkey’s ambition to restore the Ottoman Empire to its former glory.”Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other officials in Ankara have used strong language to condemn Israel’s aggression, not only in Gaza and Lebanon, but also in post-Assad Syria. An intensifying showdownIsrael began bombarding Damascus and other parts of Syria, while also illegally usurping more Syrian land past the Golan Heights, in the immediate aftermath of the former regime’s collapse nearly five months ago. Then late last month and at the start of this month, Israeli military operations struck Syrian bases in which Ankara had indicated interest following much talk about Turkey formalizing a military alliance with post-Ba’ath Syria. Ultimately, Israel wants to prevent a future in Syria where Ankara acts as Syria’s security guarantor and can effectively deter the Israelis from carrying out bombing or ground attacks on Syrian territory at will, which has been happening since Assad’s ouster, and was also taking place to a significant degree during Assad’s final years in power. The Israelis have gone as far as lobbying Washington to support a Russian military presence in the country to serve as a bulwark against Turkish influence.“Israel saw an opportunity and a power vacuum in Syria after Assad, launching numerous airstrikes and even attempting ground incursions. It also tried to stir up minority groups like the Druze and Kurds to keep Syria fragmented and weak,” explained Dr. Mustafa Caner, an assistant professor at Sakarya University Middle East Institute, in an RS interview. “In this context, Israel views Turkey as a threat, because Turkey has made it clear that it will not accept a divided and weakened Syria. In this picture, Turkey acts as a balancing force against Israel.” Despite there being a possibility of the tensions between Turkey and Israel playing out on Syrian soil escalating into a direct state-to-state confrontation, many experts see that as unlikely.On April 9, Turkish and Israeli officials met in Azerbaijan for talks aimed at bringing Turkey and Israel to a common understanding on Syria’s security landscape. The discussions centered on the establishment of a “deconfliction channel” to reduce the risks of the two powers entering a direct confrontation on or over Syrian territory.“At this stage, I absolutely do not expect a conflict [between Turkey and Israel],” Dr. Pinar Dost, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council and an associate researcher with the French Institute for Anatolian Studies, told RS.During the nearly 14-year-long civil war, similar mechanisms were established between many countries that supported opposing groups, such as Turkey-Russia, Turkey-U.S., and Russia-Israel. A similar mechanism is likely to be established between Israel and Turkey.”Dr. Karim Emile Bitar, a lecturer in Middle East Studies at Sciences Po Paris, shares this assessment that a direct military confrontation will probably not erupt. However, he stressed that “the proxy wars in Syria are not over yet” and that the combination of “Israeli overreach” and a “growing Turkish appetite” increases the risk of “growing fragmentation” of an already weak Syria as its more powerful neighbors compete for influence on its soil."As the old African proverb says, ‘When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.’ Lebanon historically was always the grass. Now Syria is becoming the grass," said Bitar.The US roleWhile tensions between these two U.S. allies over the “New Syria” remain hot, Washington is a center of gravity. The Trump administration has signaled its determination to pull Turkey and Israel back from their hostilities. "When we consider that the U.S. plans to withdraw its troops by the end of the year [and] is imposing an agreement between the [Syrian Democratic Forces] and Damascus, and Turkey’s efforts to form an anti-ISIS coalition with Iraq, Syria, and Jordan, the picture becomes quite clear," Dost said."As it withdraws from Syria, the U.S. government would like to leave behind an environment where its allies can reach an understanding. It will also want to ensure normalization between Israel and Syria before leaving," she added.During the Trump-Netanyahu Oval Office meeting on April 7, Trump praised Turkey for its role in the Assad regime’s collapse and spoke of his “very, very good relationship” with Erdogan. "I happen to like [Erdogan], and he likes me ... and we've never had a problem," said Trump, who signaled to Netanyahu his belief that Israel’s problems with Turkey will remain under control and even offered to mediate between the two. Trump told the Israeli prime minister that he must be “reasonable” in Syria when it comes to issues with Ankara.“In my view, when Trump spoke positively about Turkey’s strong role in Syria and told Netanyahu to ‘be reasonable,’ it was a warning to Israel that it had gone too far in its actions there. This amounted to an acknowledgment of Turkey as a balancing power. Netanyahu was not pleased but had no choice but to accept it,” Caner said.“Trump essentially told Netanyahu to respect Turkey’s priorities and positions. It's hardly necessary to state how much Israel relies on U.S. backing, so Trump’s warning was intended to put the brakes on Israel’s activities in Syria — and I believe it will,” he added.Recognizing Trump as a “leader who speaks the language of power,” Dost noted his respect for Erdogan’s “success in bringing about change in Syria” but she does not believe that issues concerning Ankara’s role in post-Assad Syria will fuel much tension between the White House and Netanyahu’s government. In Dost’s opinion, the real issue is Washington’s diplomatic engagement with Iran on the nuclear file with ongoing talks set to continue in May.“In his meeting with Netanyahu, Trump effectively scored two goals against him: first, by announcing plans to negotiate with Iran, and second, by praising Turkey and President Erdogan for more than two minutes. These were major blows, and Netanyahu will have a hard time overcoming them. As a result, I don't think Israel can act as recklessly as before, and it certainly cannot afford a direct confrontation with Turkey,” Caner said.
[Category: Israel, Turkey, Donald trump, Syria]
— F-18 rolls off US carrier as it turns to avoid Houthi fire: at 4/28/25 2:48pm
Today the US Navy lost a F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet — worth at least $67 million — when it fell off the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier as it took a hard turn to avoid Houthi fire. The USS Truman is stationed in the Red Sea as part of the U.S.’ ongoing anti-Houthi campaign, also known as Operation Rough Rider. “The F/A-18E was actively under tow in the hangar bay when the move crew lost control of the aircraft. The aircraft and tow tractor were lost overboard,” a statement from the Navy read. “Sailors towing the aircraft took immediate action to move clear of the aircraft before it fell overboard. An investigation is underway.” The Navy emphasized Monday that the Truman Carrier Strike Group, which has been targeted repeatedly by the Houthis, “remain[s] fully mission capable.” To date, the U.S. has spent about $3 billion in its recent anti-Houthi campaign since it began in mid-March, hitting over 800 targets in Yemen, and killing hundreds of civilians, in the process. And now, the accidental loss of a fighter jet instantaneously adds tens of millions to that total. The billions the U.S. has spent in this campaign have resulted in questionable outcomes. CENTCOM says its efforts have degraded Houthi fighting capacities; yet CNN reporting from last month suggested the campaign has only had limited results against them. Earlier this month the New York Times reported that in closed briefings, “Pentagon officials have acknowledged that there has been only limited success in destroying the Houthis’ vast, largely underground arsenal of missiles, drones and launchers.” Critically, the U.S. says its anti-Houthi campaign is about ensuring ships can go through the Red Sea without getting attacked by them. But they’re hitting at a group with other objectives, namely, pressuring U.S. ally Israel to stop its onslaught against the Gaza strip. All the while, prospects of renewed civil war in Yemen — which the U.S. has said it could be open to participating in — have only grown.
[Category: Qiosk, Military industrial complex, Houthis, Trump administration, Military spending, Yemen, Enewsletter]
— As Canadians go to polls, Trump keeps banging on annexation: at 4/28/25 12:46pm
As Canadians lined up to vote in today’s Canadian elections, Secretary of State Marco Rubio reiterated President Trump’s assertions that Canada would be better off as the 51st American state, days after Trump said he was serious and was not “trolling” on the matter.“What the President said, and he has said this repeatedly, is he was told by the previous Prime Minister [Justin Trudeau] that Canada could not survive without unfair trade with the United States, at which point [Trump] asked, ‘Well, if you can't survive as a nation without treating us unfairly in trade, then you should become a state,’” Rubio said on Meet the Press.“We'll deal with a new leadership of Canada. There are many things we’ll work with cooperatively [with] Canada on…but we actually don't like the way they treated us when it comes to trade,” Rubio explained.Meet the Press host Michelle Welker asked whether there were “policy steps” taken to annex Canada; Rubio did not provide any. She pressed him to answer explicitly whether the U.S. wants to make Canada the 51st state; in response, Rubio reiterated Trump’s comments. “I think the president has stated repeatedly he thinks Canada would be better off as a state,” he responded.Back in mid-March, Rubio previously framed Trump’s calls to annex Canada as a “disagreement” between Canada and the U.S., saying “the president has made his argument as to why he thinks Canada would be better off joining the United States for economic purposes. There's a disagreement between the president's position and the position of the Canadian government.”Altogether, Rubio’s Meet the Press comments come amid souring U.S.-Canada relations, where repeated annexation calls and an intense tariff spat led Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to say the old U.S.-Canada relationship was “over” late last month. Rubio’s statements also follow Trump’s recent comments in an interview with Time Magazine, published Friday, emphasizing he “wasn’t trolling” about annexing America’s northern neighbor. “I'm really not trolling. Canada is an interesting case. We lose $200 to $250 billion a year supporting Canada,” he told TIME magazine. “We’re taking care of their military. We're taking care of every aspect of their lives. We don't need anything from Canada. And I say the only way this thing really works is for Canada to become a state,” he said.Today’s elections in Canada are between current Canadian Prime Minister, Liberal Mark Carney, and Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre. An Abacus Data poll yesterday found Carney in the lead, with Carney receiving 41% of the prospective vote over Poilievre’s 39%.In comments made today, Trump even seemed to suggest Canadians should vote for him. “Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, WITH ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st. State of the United States of America,” he wrote.“America can no longer subsidize Canada with the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year that we have been spending in the past. It makes no sense unless Canada is a State!”As Canadians head to the ballot box, their politicians are telling Trump to butt out. “President Trump, stay out of our election. The only people who will decide the future of Canada are Canadians at the ballot box,” Conservative Party leader and PM hopeful Pierre Poilievre wrote today on X, emphasizing Canadians would “stand up” to America.“Canada will always be proud, sovereign and independent and we will NEVER be the 51st state. Today Canadians can vote for change so we can strengthen our country, stand on our own two feet and stand up to America from a position of strength,” he wrote.
[Category: Canada elections, Trump, Carney, Rubio, Poilievre, Trump administration, Qiosk, Canada]
— China, Philippines both plant flag on reef, escalating Maritime tussle: at 4/27/25 10:05pm
The Philippines-China maritime tussle just edged up a notch this past week, with Chinese television reporting a Chinese flag-planting operation in a tiny cluster of sand banks in the South China Sea known as Sandy Cay. Chinese personnel left after their operation, which apparently took place earlier in the month. The Philippines responded in kind soon after the announcement, with a combined team of its navy, coast guard, and police mirroring the Chinese action. The incidents took place in the backdrop of the major U.S.-Philippine annual exercise Balikatan, which began on April 21.The situation in the South China Sea has been deteriorating since late 2023, when clashes between Manila and Beijing escalated dramatically. A limited agreement in July 2024 on the most dangerous flashpoint, the Second Thomas Shoal, has held up until now. Manila has been running resupply missions without incident to the tiny contingent of Philippine troops perched there since then. But as we predicted in August 2024, clashes have indeed spread to new geographies, keeping the overall tensions high.Manila, which has named the West Philippine Sea its EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone) as, might worry that Beijing’s show-of-sovereignty operation is designed to eventually occupy it and build military structures, similar to what China did at nearby Subi Reef about a decade ago. But the operation was likely not just about possession of the reef — but about pushing the question of maritime rights and jurisdiction over the surrounding waters. In 2016, an international tribunal ruled these waters as being indisputably a part of the Philippine EEZ. But Sandy Cay, referenced as a high-tide feature in the ruling, is likely entitled to a territorial sea of 12 nautical miles, overlapping with Chinese-militarized Subi Reef. (The tribunal explicitly refused to rule over the sovereignty of Sandy Cay and determined Subi Reef to be a low-tide elevation generating neither a sovereignty claim nor its own territorial sea or EEZ.) Sandy Cay is also very close to Thitu island where Manila maintains a military base. Thitu is also the only Philippine-controlled island with a permanent civilian population.Chinese maritime coercion and illegal intrusions are increasingly of concern, not just to the Philippines, but also to wider Southeast Asia. The United States has been getting more involved in the imbroglio, deepening its commitment to its treaty ally, the Philippines, including with new U.S. military sites on the Philippine mainland. If the current simmer boils over, U.S. troops could be exposed to risks over tiny features in the ocean that are arguably not a U.S. vital interest. A nuanced approach will be required of the alliance to both deter Chinese behavior and avoid stumbling into armed conflict at the same time.
[Category: China, Philippines, Us military, South china sea, Qiosk]
— Trump can boycott, but the failure and end of Vietnam War is a fact: at 4/27/25 10:05pm
The Trump administration has ordered U.S. diplomats in Vietnam not to attend ceremonies marking the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War on Wednesday, according to a report in the New York Times. Although mere ceremonies that look backward in history may seem unimportant compared to the current problems that diplomats must address, this decision to shun official representation at events that the Vietnamese government is organizing is regrettable. It represents a failure to recognize one of the greatest transitions in U.S. foreign policy from a destructive to a constructive path.No better example of the opposite of a policy of restraint can be found than the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The costs of the war to the United States were so great and varied as to be, in many respects, incalculable. Those costs included more than 58,000 American deaths and over 300,000 wounded. Estimates of the monetary costs vary but are around a third of a trillion dollars. The economic disruptions from the war had lingering ill effects for years, including contributing to the stagflation of the 1970s. Not least important, the war fractured American society and fed increased distrust of government.Direct U.S. involvement in the war ended with the withdrawal of the last U.S. troops in March 1973, 60 days after the signing of the peace agreement that Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho negotiated. The South Vietnamese regime collapsed two years later. The fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975 to forces of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam — the North Vietnamese regime — marked the end of the fighting and is the date whose anniversary is being observed this month.In the five decades since, the United States and Vietnam forged a warm, multifaceted relationship. Diplomatic relations were normalized in 1995. In the words of a State Department fact sheet published this January, “U.S.-Vietnam relations have become increasingly cooperative and comprehensive, evolving into a flourishing partnership that spans political, economic, security, and people-to-people ties.” Bilateral trade grew from $451 million in 1995 to nearly $124 billion in 2023.In 2023, during a visit to Vietnam by President Joe Biden, the two nations declared a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership that extends to defense and security matters. A key shared interest underlying such cooperation is to limit the expanding influence and power of China.This later history has demonstrated how badly wrong the major assumptions underlying the U.S. decision to go to war in Vietnam were. The military adversary there was not, as was assumed, part of a communist monolith led by Moscow and Beijing. The subsequent history has shown how the United States can have a mutually beneficial relationship even with a regime that still avows an ideology foreign to America’s own.The 50th anniversary this week marks not just a victory of North Vietnam over the South. More fundamentally — and more importantly for the United States — it marks the end of an extremely costly misdirection of U.S. foreign policy and a clearing of the way to embark on a peaceful, profitable, and mutually beneficial relationship between the United States and Vietnam. That is worth observing, for reasons that go well beyond respect for the host country.Much effort by multiple U.S. administrations, of both parties, has gone into building that beneficial relationship. Now, under the current administration, that work risks being undone. The demolition of programs administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development has halted U.S.-funded efforts to undo some of the damage left over from the war, involving such things as finding unexploded munitions and the remains of missing soldiers, and cleaning up areas contaminated by the Agent Orange defoliant. President Trump’s trade war has threatened Vietnam with a 46% tariff — one of the highest of the so-called “reciprocal” tariffs to be directed at any country — even though the tariffs that Vietnam actually applies to U.S. exports are well below that. How much tariff-related damage will yet occur is uncertain as of this writing and depends on further negotiations. Now, the administration appears ready to add insult to injury with a boycott of the end-of-war anniversary observances. The Times report speculates that one possible motivation for this posture is not wanting to detract from the 100-day mark of Trump’s second term. Another is not wanting to draw any attention to a war that Trump avoided thanks to bone spurs while hundreds of thousands of his contemporaries were being drafted into military service.Perhaps a more fundamental reason is Trump’s tendency to view nearly everything in zero-sum terms, with a winner and a loser. From that viewpoint, what happened 50 years ago was nothing more than a win by North Vietnam and a loss by the U.S. client South Vietnam. But the world, and international relations, are by no means zero-sum. This certainly is true of relations between the United States and Vietnam, as the subsequent half century of history has demonstrated.As a U.S. Army officer in Vietnam in 1972-1973, I was involved in administering the final phases of the U.S. troop withdrawal. Because of having to process everyone out first, I returned to the United States on the last plane of that final withdrawal in March 1973. Being the very end of the U.S. part of the war, there were ceremonial aspects, including a red-carpet welcome when our plane landed in California. I participated in a ceremony de-activating my unit, the 90th Replacement Battalion, which had seen service in several other conflicts beginning with World War I. I expressed to a reporter covering the event my hope that the unit would never need to be activated again.The ceremonies provided a sense of closure that so many others who had served in Vietnam, and who returned unappreciated to a divided country, were not as fortunate as I was to have. Now, in a nation that seems at least as bitterly divided as ever, a little bit of ceremony, recognizing a past transition from a tragic phase of U.S. foreign relations to a more beneficial phase, might do the nation some similar good.
[Category: Enewsletter, Fall of saigon, Trump, Southeast asia, Vietnam, Vietnam war]
— China plants flag, escalates South China Sea tussle with Philippines: at 4/27/25 10:05pm
The Philippines-China maritime tussle just edged up a notch this past week, with Chinese television reporting a Chinese flag-planting operation in a tiny cluster of sand banks in the South China Sea known as Sandy Cay. Chinese personnel left after their operation, which apparently took place earlier in the month. The Philippines responded in kind soon after the announcement, with a combined team of its navy, coast guard, and police mirroring the Chinese action. The incidents took place in the backdrop of the major U.S.-Philippine annual exercise Balikatan, which began on April 21.The situation in the South China Sea has been deteriorating since late 2023, when clashes between Manila and Beijing escalated dramatically. A limited agreement in July 2024 on the most dangerous flashpoint, the Second Thomas Shoal, has held up until now. Manila has been running resupply missions without incident to the tiny contingent of Philippine troops perched there since then. But as we predicted in August 2024, clashes have indeed spread to new geographies, keeping the overall tensions high.Manila, which has named the West Philippine Sea its EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone) as, might worry that Beijing’s show-of-sovereignty operation is designed to eventually occupy it and build military structures, similar to what China did at nearby Subi Reef about a decade ago. But the operation was likely not just about possession of the reef — but about pushing the question of maritime rights and jurisdiction over the surrounding waters. In 2016, an international tribunal ruled these waters as being indisputably a part of the Philippine EEZ. But Sandy Cay, referenced as a high-tide feature in the ruling, is likely entitled to a territorial sea of 12 nautical miles, overlapping with Chinese-militarized Subi Reef. (The tribunal explicitly refused to rule over the sovereignty of Sandy Cay and determined Subi Reef to be a low-tide elevation generating neither a sovereignty claim nor its own territorial sea or EEZ.) Sandy Cay is also very close to Thitu island where Manila maintains a military base. Thitu is also the only Philippine-controlled island with a permanent civilian population.Chinese maritime coercion and illegal intrusions are increasingly of concern, not just to the Philippines, but also to wider Southeast Asia. The United States has been getting more involved in the imbroglio, deepening its commitment to its treaty ally, the Philippines, including with new U.S. military sites on the Philippine mainland. If the current simmer boils over, U.S. troops could be exposed to risks over tiny features in the ocean that are arguably not a U.S. vital interest. A nuanced approach will be required of the alliance to both deter Chinese behavior and avoid stumbling into armed conflict at the same time.
[Category: China, Philippines, Us military, South china sea, Qiosk]
— South Sudan teetering on the edge of civil war: at 4/27/25 10:05pm
The people of South Sudan are once again forced to flee their homes and endure severe hunger as the country is on the brink of civil war. The escalating violence and skyrocketing tensions between leaders in South Sudan threaten the country's stability and regional security and risk worsening the humanitarian crisis.President Salva Kiir’s recent detention of the country’s main opposition leader, Vice President Riek Machar, and his aides is raising fears of military clashes and violence across the country between the national force (SSPDF) and the military wing of Machar's party (SPLM/A-IO). On March 18, in response to the detention of its officials and the deployment of Ugandan forces, the SPLM/A-IO announced the immediate suspension of its participation in key security mechanisms established under the 2018 Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (R-ARCSS). Conversely, the government accused Machar of plotting a rebellion to disrupt peace and upcoming elections. The United Nations issued multiple warnings that South Sudan is on the verge of civil war and urged all sides to uphold the peace agreement.Tensions have been building between the factions for months, with Kiir dismissing several officials from SPLM/A–IO without consultation. Furthermore, Kiir’s move to appoint businessman Benjamin Bol Mel as his successor, sidelining allies and the opposition, has further escalated tensions. Bol Mel has been on the U.S. sanctions list since 2017 for his role in government corruption.The most recent outbreak of violence erupted on March 4, when the White Army, a youth militia loyal to Machar, seized control of Nasir, a town in oil-rich Upper Nile State, following intense fighting with government forces. The White Army militia also attacked a U.N. helicopter, which resulted in the killing of 28 SSPDF soldiers and one U.N. crew member. In response, government forces launched air strikes on civilian areas with barrel bombs. The U.N. says the attacks killed 180 people, injured over 250, and caused at least 125,000 people to flee the area. The deployment of the Uganda People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) to support Kiir and the government further worsened the security situation as it violated the U.N. arms embargo, while the opposition charges that it is taking part in airstrikes and attacks in Upper Nile State. The current situation carries similarities to early warning signs seen before the 2013-2018 conflict, such as accusations of attempted coups, violent clashes, a rise in misinformation, disinformation, and hate speech, both sides mobilizing people for confrontation, and the involvement of foreign forces.Threats to South Sudan’s fragile peacePolitical strife between Kiir and Machar dates back to pre-South Sudan independence in 2011 and comes from two main conflicting tribes in South Sudan, Kiir from the Dinka and Machar from the Nuer. Both were key figures in the Sudan People Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), a rebel movement founded and initially led by John Garang (Dinka), which fought with Khartoum for independence. However, leadership styles and differences in movement visions caused tension between Garang and Nuer colleagues, resulting in the infamous “1991 split” and the formation of the Nuer-dominated SPLM-Nasir faction. Machar ascended to vice president after his 1997 peace deal with the Sudanese government, which deepened tensions with Kiir and his allies. Both groups are accused of committing grave human rights violations in South Sudan. Furthermore, lack of effective governance, corruption, unaddressed grievances and the ongoing competition for control over South Sudan’s resources and military forces are reasons for political deadlock that fuels violence. A democratic election, as agreed in the 2018 peace deal, has been postponed multiple times. And given the ongoing political crisis, it’s unlikely there will be one any time soon.Regional implicationsMeanwhile, the war in Sudan between the Sudanese military under General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) under General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo “Hemedti” has significantly impacted South Sudan. The conflict led to the destruction of key oil infrastructure in Khartoum, cutting off South Sudan’s primary source of income. Initially, President Kiir aligned himself with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). However, as the RSF gained control over major oil facilities, Kiir realigned his support toward the RSF and its key sponsor, the UAE, to restore the flow of oil and gold crucial to South Sudan’s economy. This strained his relations with Al-Burhan and SAF.Conversely, SAF might have reactivated its ties with Machar and SPLA-IO after Kiir and RSF grew closer. This suspicion is strengthened by reports indicating that the SPLA-IO has received weapons and other forms of support from SAF. Moreover, the recent fighting between SPLA-IO and RSF in Upper Nile and Blue Nile states signals a move by SAF to prevent RSF/SPLA-N movements in the border area and to squeeze them out of areas on the border with South Sudan.The proxy war between South Sudan and Sudan, fueled by each government's support for opposing militias threatens to destabilize both nations and the Horn of Africa further, undermining already fragile peace processes. It could risk a full-scale conflict that could drag both countries into a direct war. In addition to Sudan, other neighboring countries like Uganda, Ethiopia, and Kenya face the prospect of increased refugee flows, cross-border insecurity, and economic disruption. Next stepsThe U.N., the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, the African Union, regional leaders, the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Norway, as well as the European Union, have all called the South Sudanese leaders to de-escalate the crisis, release detained officials, recommit to peace, and resolve issues through dialogue.Meanwhile, the recent U.S. aid cut will likely have severe impacts on the humanitarian crisis, weaken peacebuilding efforts, and diminish American influence and commitment. Instead of scaling back, Washington should combine diplomatic pressure on political leaders with consistent support for civilian protection and long-term peacebuilding initiatives. At the same time, it must ensure that aid is used appropriately and not diverted toward corrupt activities.Furthermore, the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) must take all necessary actions to increase its protection of civilians in Juba, Bentui, and Malakal and establish temporary operating bases in conflict and high-risk areas in Western Bahr-el-Ghazal state, Western Equatoria state, Unity state, Jonglei state and in Upper Nile state, particularly in, Akobo, Nasir, Ulaang, and Longochuk. In addition, the U.N. Security Council and African Union should urge warring parties to immediately end unlawful attacks on civilians and to recommit to the peace agreement.
[Category: Sudan, South sudan]
— Enrichment is the sticking point as US-Iran talks cautiously 'hopeful': at 4/27/25 10:05pm
Alarmed by reports of dissension in the White House on U.S. Iran policy, the director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies recently warned that Iran will “exploit these different negotiating positions…as soon as the regime smells desperation.”This alert was probably prompted by the White House’s chief negotiating envoy, Steven Witkoff, who stated on Monday, April 14, that “Iran does not need to enrich [uranium] past 3.67 percent,” only to declare on Tuesday that “Iran must…eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program.” In one day, he went from a position that could offer the basis for a negotiated deal to echoing administration hawks, such as national security adviser Mike Waltz, who insists that the total dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program is the only acceptable goal. Where is this all going? While making predictions when it comes to Donald Trump is risky, multiple press reports (including from Iran and Israel) suggest that the April 19 indirect talks between the U.S. and Iran in Oman made progress. The same for the latest round in Oman on Saturday, which were described as “hopeful but cautious” by the U.S. side. That Trump might push for a deal despite the opposition of his own security adviser, not to mention that of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, may suggest how desperate he is for a foreign policy win that poses risks but also possible benefits. The bigger question is where such a deal fits into a wider Middle East strategy, or indeed if such a strategy is even in the offing.Potential benefits of a dealCritics will likely charge that Iran will cheat — although Tehran adhered to the 2015 accord — or that the deal doesn’t cover Iran’s missile program given that the talks are singularly focused on nuclear issues. They will also argue that sanctions relief could give Iran an opening to partially revive its badly damaged “axis of resistance” strategy. Such possible downsides must be weighed against the potential benefits of a new agreement — even for those countries (including Israel and especially the U.S.) that will continue to face a formidable and untrustworthy foe. A deal would undercut Iran’s hardliners while opening more space for reformists. In their efforts over the last year to further entrench their already considerable power in advance of the battle over who will succeed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — a struggle that cannot be far off — hardliners have run into obstacles, including an economy in full meltdown and a tricky “no peace/no war” strategy that has been wrecked by the near collapse of the “axis of resistance.”A revival of the reformists’ fortunes will not, of course, lead to liberal democracy. Still, it could foster a domestic power shift that promotes political decompression at home and wider engagement abroad. And while the March 2 resignation of former Foreign Minister Javad Zarif from his vice presidential post signals the hardliners’ enduring influence, a deal could also help President Masoud Pezeshkian’s reach out to more mainstream conservatives, thus widening his de facto coalition even as he retains the support of the Supreme Leader.Moreover, a deal might in fact reduce the dangers for Iran that will definitely come with any bid to create an effective nuclear weapons option. Although it has enough enriched uranium for one bomb — and, according to some reports, may have enough for four or five more — there are still complex steps (such as testing) that Iran must take to build a comprehensive system that can provide a “second strike” capacity that would deter an Israeli assault. While estimates vary as to how long this will take, the very effort to move in this direction would provoke a massive attack by the U.S. and Israel. This is the last thing Iranian leaders want.Indeed, press reports suggest that Israel was preparing to launch such an attack in May but was prevented from doing so by Trump and a handful of security officials. Paradoxically, Iran and the U.S. have been drawn together by their mutual desire to prevent a wider regional war that could have multiple costs. With some 20 percent of oil and gas flowing through the Gulf — and with Trump’s tariff policy wreaking global havoc — a no-deal scenario could propel the U.S., Israel and Iran into a sustained military conflict that would set the stage for an international economic crisis. In short, a deal would give Iran a much-needed assist off a perilous path that its own accelerated enrichment program has helped to create.Finally, many U.S. military experts have questioned whether any such attack would permanently destroy Iran’s nuclear program. While it would set it back for some years, it could also prompt a decision by Iran to exit the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and rebuild its nuclear program without the constraints of any international system of controls and inspections. Such a development could trigger a conventional and even nuclear arms race with many of its Arab neighbors. This is not something many Iranian hardliners want.Deal is no substitute for a coherent US strategyWriting on his Substack page “Clarity,” former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren, recently argued that given the very real possibility that American and “Iranian envoys are negotiating a new nuclear deal,” Israel must “prepare for the worst” by getting “ironclad U.S. security guarantees…that [Israel] will always have the means to defend ourselves against Iranian aggression. We must, for the first time, be permitted to purchase strategic bombers and train our crews to fly them.”This remarkable statement underscores Israel’s total failure to use its military might to advance a diplomatic regional and global strategy that would have the support of the U.S., Europe and even Russia and China. Israel, as Aaron David Miller and Steven Simon have recently argued, may now be the regional hegemon. But in projecting its military might in Syria, Lebanon, Iran and most of all Gaza, Israel has also advanced the goals of messianic Jewish supremacist parties that want to impose a theocracy at home, permanent occupation over three million Palestinians, and the banishment of some two million hapless souls in Gaza.Trump seems ready to embrace this version of Israeli hegemony. But he is unlikely to provide all the weapons that Israel will demand. And yet his resistance to providing the “bunker busting” munitions Israel needs to penetrate Iran’s deepest nuclear facilities does not suggest a wider regional vision. Beyond sustaining the Abraham Accords between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco, Trump has no larger plan other than trying to keep the U.S. out of Middle East wars. But as his recent decision to withdraw half of U.S. troops just as ISIS appears to be expanding in Syria suggests, he may have to contend with a region that drifts into chaos in ways that could force him to change course or take military steps that could trigger a wider conflict. As he prepares for a mid-May trip to Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Qatar, Gulf leaders will not be reassured by his often ad-libbed foreign policy that is abetting what they see as genocide and war crimes in Gaza.Indeed, while preferable to the black hole of regional war, a nuclear deal is no substitute for a coherent U.S. strategy. These dangers of tactical improvisation were amply displayed by President Joe Biden. But Trump is no less wedded to a clear strategy than his predecessor. On the contrary, what appears to count most for Trump is securing and demonstrating power. Iran’s leaders grasp this fact and thus may be willing to indulge his desire to get at least one “win” to get a deal.With the third round of negotiations now concluded, it appears that enough progress was made to sustain the talks. There is no doubt that the question of enrichment will be the biggest sticking point. Moreover, opponents of a deal in Israel, Iran and the U.S. will exploit every chance to wreck the talks. Whether the April 26 explosion on the Iranian port of Bandahar was the result of sabotage or a tragic accident, they are a reminder that the very prospect of a wider regional conflict that has galvanized the talks remains a real threat.
[Category: Iran, Nuclear deal, Nuclear talks, Jcpoa, Israel, Us-iran]
— Was Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood ban a bid to please Israel, Saudi?: at 4/24/25 10:05pm
On Wednesday, the Jordanian government declared that it had banned the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement that has long been active in the kingdom. The announcement followed arrests last week of 16 members of the group for allegedly plotting an attack inside Jordan. The interior minister stated that the group and all its affiliated activities were illegal. It was not immediately clear what impact the ban would have on the Islamic Action Front, the political party affiliated with the Brotherhood, which won a plurality of votes in last fall’s parliamentary election. The party tried to distance itself from the Brotherhood during a press conference on Wednesday, saying it would continue to operate as an independent political party with no affiliation and “within the limits of the law.” Following the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s subsequent campaign to bomb and blockade Gaza, the Islamic Action Front became significantly more vocal in its longstanding criticism of Israel, as well as of the 1994 Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty. The party’s critique reflected widespread rage among Jordanians, approximately half of whom are originally from historic Palestine, provoked by Israel’s brutal military campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 50,000 people, mostly women and children. That anger has been expressed in frequent public demonstrations as well as a widespread boycott of American and European products, due to these countries’ support for Israel’s actions. The IAF translated public dissatisfaction with the Jordanian government’s perceived complicity in Israel’s war into electoral success in last September’s parliamentary elections. In a statement to the Jordan News in response to the banning of the Brotherhood, Zaki Bani Irshaid, the former secretary general of the Islamic Action Front, criticized the government’s decision for stoking internal division at a time when Jordan faced an existential threat from Israel’s creeping annexation of the West Bank. If Israel tried to force the three million Palestinians who live in the West Bank across the border into Jordan, the continued rule of King Abdullah and the Hashemite monarchy would likely be seriously threatened. Anger at the king’s perceived willingness to effectively acquiesce to Israel’s destruction of Gaza raises questions as to why he outlawed the Brotherhood now, which risks provoking greater unrest. The announcement was made while a Saudi delegation, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was visiting Amman, prompting speculation that Abdullah may have wished to demonstrate his anti-Islamist bona fides. The Saudi government has waged a years-long campaign against the Saudi Muslim Brotherhood as it attempts to transform its approach to Islam under the auspices of MbS’s Vision 2030. Jordan has long relied on Saudi Arabia, as well as the United States, for financial support. Last year, Riyadh completed a $250 million aid package for Jordan. With U.S. President Donald Trump having suspended the $1.45 billion the U.S. annually sends to Jordan, Abdullah is likely eager to secure other sources of funding. Yet this is not the first time that Abdullah has targeted the group. In a 2013 interview, he described the Brotherhood as “run by wolves in sheep’s clothing.” In 2015, the government helped to orchestrate a split between the group’s so-called “hawks” and “doves,” allowing the latter to retain control of all of the Brotherhood’s assets. In 2016, the government closed the offices of the so-called “hawks,” after preventing them from holding elections for the group’s internal leadership. All of these reflect Abdullah’s general suspicion of the Brotherhood and its popularity. Yet historically, the Jordanian branch of Brotherhood was known as the “loyal opposition.” In contrast to the repression suffered by the original Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and some of its branches elsewhere around the region, the Jordanian monarchy has tolerated the group, which in turn avoided openly challenging the king’s rule. The group itself is as old as Jordan itself — both of them were established in 1946. During the reign of King Hussein (1952-1999), the group was permitted to operate, including by running schools and charities and other social services. His son Abdullah took the throne not long before the 9/11 attacks transformed the U.S. approach to the Middle East. Abdullah was eager to partner with Washington, including by hosting CIA “black sites” for the detention, interrogation, and torture of suspected Al Qaeda militants and assisting in the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. As counter-terrorism dominated the U.S. security agenda, Abdullah sought to portray himself as a “moderate Muslim partner” against violent extremism. Under the rubric of “moderate Islam” versus “extremist Islam,” Abdullah, like many regional leaders, falsely portrayed Islamist movements, despite their explicit rejection of violence, as supportive of terrorism, if not the actual perpetrators, and thus essentially equivalent. Under this framework, Abdullah could more easily depict the Brotherhood as suspect. His latest move to repress the group likely reflects his concern that opposition to his ongoing partnership with Israel is growing. Across much of the Middle East, Arab publics continue to watch in horror as Israel violated its ceasefire with Hamas and then returned to pounding Gaza with renewed ferocity while simultaneously preventing all aid, food, or medicine from entering the territory since March 2. In the intervening 53 days, the risk of acute malnutrition has grown, with the UN World Food Program warning that hundreds of thousands of people are at risk. Abdullah’s crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood will likely do little to quell his population’s growing frustration as more children succumb to starvation in Gaza.
[Category: Enewsletter, Muslim brotherhood, Kind abdullah, Jordan]
— Diplomacy Watch: The White House now wielding ultimatums: at 4/24/25 10:05pm
The Trump administration has threatened to move on from negotiations to end the war in Ukraine after less than enthusiastic signals from Ukrainian leadership for President Trump’s plan for peace and Russia’s continued attacks on civilians in Ukraine. Trump reportedly presented the plan to both parties earlier in the week, and afterward stated that Russian President Vladimir Putin was ready to accept the deal, but Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy was resisting, which left Trump “frustrated.”“I think we have a deal with Russia,” Trump told reporters, while indicating that Zelenskyy has been “harder” to convince.For his part, Zelenskyy told reporters he opposed the plan’s purported recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, saying that it “violated our Constitution. This is our territory, the territory of Ukraine,” said Zelenskyy. Trump responded by stating that rejecting the deal would only “prolong the ‘killing field.’”Whether Ukraine can legally recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea may not matter, as the Trump team asserted that the United States could recognize Russia’s de jure annexation of Crimea without Ukraine having to do so as well. Meanwhile, Trump is also criticizing Putin, and just not for his reaction to the peace deal. The Russian president was on the receiving end of Trump’s social media ire after Russia launched a deadly wave of attacks on Kyiv. In its largest attack on the Ukrainian capital since last summer, Russia launched 70 missiles and 145 drones mainly towards Ukraine’s capital, claiming at least 12 lives and injuring 90 more. “I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV. Not necessary, and very bad timing. Vladimir, STOP! 5000 soldiers a week are dying. Let’s get the Peace Deal DONE!” the president said in a post on Truth Social.“The Ukrainians have to go back home, they have to run it by their president, they have to take into account their views on all of this,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said of the plan. “But we need to figure out here now, within a matter of days, whether this is doable in the short term. Because if it’s not, then I think we’re just going to move on.”Vice President JD Vance held a similar position when questioned by reporters. “We’ve issued a very explicit proposal to both the Russians and the Ukrainians, and it’s time for them to either say yes or for the United States to walk away from this process,” he said.Anatol Lieven, Director of the Quincy Institute’s Eurasia Program, said that if Washington moves on, “Ukraine will have placed itself in a terribly precarious situation, and West European countries may face a choice between deep humiliation and immense danger. For if U.S. aid is withdrawn, Ukraine’s ability to hold its present line would be greatly reduced, and the chances of a Russian breakthrough greatly increased.” Other Ukraine War News This WeekAl Jazeera reports that Putin is ready for direct talks with Zelenskyy. The Russian president told Russian TV that he has a “positive attitude towards any peace initiatives.” Zelenskyy indicated that Ukraine would be willing to participate in direct talks after the Easter truce expired. Neither side has held direct talks since February 2022. Russia’s top security official, Sergei Shoigu indicated on Thursday that Russia could use nuclear weapons if Western nations acted aggressively toward Moscow. According to Reuters, Shoigu said that Russia’s amended nuclear doctrine would allow Moscow to consider a nuclear strike if Russia or Belarus received a conventional strike from an enemy that “created a critical threat to their sovereignty and (or) their territorial integrity.”Zelenskyy has met with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to discuss improving trade and ending the war. Al Jazeera reports that the Ukrainian president cut his visit to Pretoria short due to Moscow’s strikes on Kyiv. South Africa has remained neutral on the conflict, pushing for dialogue between parties. From the State Department briefing on April 22nd:During questioning by reporters, spokesperson Tammy Bruce confirmed that General Kellogg would participate in the most recent round of negotiations with Moscow, and that Secretary of State Rubio and Special Envoy Witkoff were not guaranteed to do so. She also indicated that President Trump is optimistic about the potential to solve the Russia-Ukraine war diplomatically. “Both the Secretary (of State) and the President have said that this cannot be won militarily, and so they want diplomacy to work,” she told reporters.
[Category: Ukraine war, Qiosk, Russia, Trump, Russia-ukraine]
— US-China trade war: Escalate to de-escalate to escalate?: at 4/24/25 10:05pm
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Trump is considering a significant reduction of the extraordinarily high tariffs on China that followed a dizzying tit-for-tat spiral between the two countries in early April. China was the only country to immediately retaliate against Trump’s draconian “liberation day” tariffs, and Trump’s intolerance for that self-assertion led to 145% tariffs on the U.S. side and 125% tariffs on the Chinese side — tantamount to severing economic relations overnight between the world’s two most important economic powers.Trump’s public softening is a hopeful sign because the tariff confrontation could all too easily tip over into an irreparable break between the United States and China, ultimately developing into large-scale violence. Yet significant obstacles stand in the way, and both sides have already taken damaging steps that undermine the possibility for de-escalation. Regardless of what happens with the tariff rate, if the Trump administration successfully pushes major third countries to exclude China from their economies, conflict is likely to spin out of control.Commentators have been slow to focus on the danger of U.S.–China conflict. Many have grown complacent as the conflict became familiar and seemingly contained to small-scale antagonistic measures and empty diplomatic discussions. Trump’s conflicts with allies, his tariff campaign against the whole world, and his attacks on liberal institutions at home have drawn all the attention.Yet we now stand in a moment of acute danger. Against a years-long background of growing economic, military, and philosophical tensions, the trade war threatens to unleash a series of escalatory dynamics across all realms in the U.S.–China relationship. Already under the first Trump and Biden administrations, the gradual formation of adversarial geopolitical blocs was underway. Biden’s consolidation and systematization of Trump 1’s exclusionary policies toward China had convinced the Chinese leadership of immovable American hostility to China’s interests. Then, Trump stacked his administration with a fractious national security and international economic team whose only point of agreement was the need for confrontation with China.Trump himself, however, offered hope of escaping a devastating international conflict. His enthusiasm for dealmaking, his admiration of Xi Jinping, and his hostility to the dogmas of American primacy that animated the Biden administration all created an opening to move the relationship off its trajectory toward permanent hostility. Beijing recognized the possibilities and from the moment of Trump’s election victory began informally floating ideas on what China could offer to Trump’s priorities, seeking a reliable connection in Trump’s notoriously fluid inner circle, and inquiring into how a negotiation process could be structured.The biggest obstacle was not Trump’s team, which he has cowed into obedience, but his desire to cow China, too.Rather than responding to Beijing’s outreach, Trump hit China with an initial 10%t tariff increase in early February, claiming it was punishment for China’s indirect involvement in the fentanyl trade. Media coverage focused on even larger punitive tariffs directed at Canada and México, but these were quickly withdrawn while those on China remained. Trump repeated the same routine in early March, again sparing Canada and México while raising tariffs on China another 10%.China responded with considerable restraint to both rounds, still seeking to preserve space for negotiation. Already under Biden, China had begun cooperation on limiting fentanyl inputs, so Chinese leaders were skeptical that this was the real issue. With increasing urgency, Beijing sought to determine what Trump actually wanted. But no response was forthcoming.Then came the “liberation day” tariffs, with a 34% increase applied to China, and Beijing fundamentally changed its approach. China’s leaders seem to have concluded that Trump simply wants to demonstrate his own power by debasing China, as he has done to countries ranging from Canada to Colombia to Ukraine. This is clear in China’s repeated condition for talks: they “must proceed in a manner of sovereign equality on a foundation of mutual respect.”The Chinese Communist Party’s entire foreign policy legitimacy and ideology are built on the claim that it remade China so that it could finally stand up against the depredations of foreign powers. Chinese diplomats’ emphasis on respectful treatment, often expressed through a preoccupation with diplomatic protocol and a sharp antipathy toward U.S. attempts to discredit China, grows from this foundation.Even as he mulls the possibility of reducing the crippling tariff rates he imposed, Trump continues to say that China will have to be the one to request it. “China wants to make a deal. They just don’t know how quite to go about it,” Trump said shortly after tossing away the chance for talks and breaking the economic relationship. “You know, it’s one of those things they don’t know quite — they’re proud people.”Over the last two weeks, he and close advisers like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have repeatedly expressed such sentiments. In response, China has shown openness to talks but insists it will not negotiate at the point of a gun. China is also looking for a clear process in the talks and some sense of an agenda from the United States. Most recently, China’s Commerce Ministry suggested that Trump could resolve the impasse by removing all “unilateral tariff measures.”As the two trade accusations in public, in the background both are moving in the most dangerous direction possible: to force the rest of the world to choose one or the other. In its talks with other countries that were targeted on “liberation day,” the Trump administration is demanding that they sever economic ties with China. China responded by arguing that other countries would be short-sighted to make deals with a bully and promising “equivalent countermeasures” against any country that sacrifices Chinese interests as the price for access to the United States.We are now stuck in the absurd spectacle of the world’s two most powerful leaders acting like children who want to make up but who insist that the other take the first step. The longer this impasse lasts, the less likely we will avoid cascading escalation into conflict.
[Category: Enewsletter, China, Trump, Xi jinping, Tariffs, Trade, Trade war, Us-china]
— Pope Francis was often mocked for railing against current wars: at 4/24/25 10:05pm
No Pope had ever kissed the feet of leaders, begging them to bring peace to their country. But in April 2019, Pope Francis surprised South Sudan and the entire world when he did just that to President Salva Kiir, Vice President Riek Machar, James Wani Igga, Taban Deng Gai, and Rebecca Nyandeng De Mabior; a gesture that clearly expressed his belief that the Pontiff of the Catholic Church must be a committed and unwavering peacemaker.Pope Francis spoke about peace until his very last breath. In his brief message before the Urbi et Orbi blessing on April 20, Easter Sunday, he mentioned peace 10 times, remembering the Holy Land and the gift of all Christians celebrating Easter on the same day, in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, the Southern Caucasus, the Balkans, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and South Sudan, the Sahel, the Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes region, and also Myanmar.His memory of specific countries and regions was accompanied by his concern for freedom of religion, freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and respect for the views of others. He stressed that no peace is possible without true disarmament. The call was “to care for one another, to increase our mutual solidarity, and to work for the integral development of each human person.”These were not only his last words. These were the words of an entire life and of an entire pontificate. Even the name chosen, “Francis,” was a sign of his commitment to peace and the poor. No Pope before him had used that name, the name of a poor friar from Assisi who, in 1219, was bold enough to counter the Crusaders and meet Sultan Malik al-Kamil in Damietta, Egypt.Indeed, Pope Francis spoke about peace, invited peace, and worked for peace even and especially when few did so — much like his chosen namesake. He was the first Pope to visit the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq, the first to develop a personal friendship with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed Al-Tayyeb, the same way he was friends with Rabbi Abraham Skorka in Argentina. He expressed the same personal touch through his frequent calls to the only Catholic church in the Gaza Strip.Yet, his ministry was not only about personal relationships and feelings. It was made of bold steps for the world such as the “Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together,” the first document to be signed by both a Catholic Pope and a Grand Imam of Al-Azhar. It was signed 800 years after St. Francis visited Sultan Malik al-Kamil and marked a dramatic turn in the relationship between Muslims and Christians.It was also bold to declare, as he did in Nagasaki, Japan, that “the use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral, just as the possession of nuclear weapons is immoral.” The opposition of the Catholic Church and prior Pontiffs to nuclear weapons had been clear but Pope Francis’ statement went beyond; we must imagine a world without nuclear weapons, we must imagine a world in peace.And he was equally bold when he denounced the arms trade, repeatedly condemning those who profit from war in his address to the United States Congress in September 2015, saying, “why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society? Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money; money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood.”For his boldness and love of peace, Pope Francis was openly criticized, even mocked. This was especially true when he tried to open a path to peace in Ukraine by sending Cardinal Matteo Zuppi to Kyiv, Moskow, Washington, and Beijing. In that context, peace was and has been a dirty word, but in his words and actions, Francis insisted that peace remain central, underlining the value of the human person, of peoples, over and against the destructive power of violence.Similar resistance emerged against his stance in favor of the dejected, migrants, and prisoners. Pope Francis was caring. He was aware of the trials and tribulations of many, and, aware, he cared for them and invited others to do the same.He made himself a pilgrim of peace, travelling the globe, witnessing to peace and spreading the invitation widely. He traveled to many countries where the Catholic population was a minority and was always welcomed with great warmth and appreciation. He made the world smaller, weaving it together in a time of further distances and higher walls.He went from South Sudan, where he told the leaders, “future generations will either venerate your names or cancel their memory, based on what you now do,” and then to Iraq, where he met Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf saying, “peace does not demand winners or losers, but brothers and sisters who, despite misunderstandings and past wounds, choose the path of dialogue.”Francis was undetered, and worked tirelessly and repeatedly. In May 2014, then-Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with him in the Vatican and recently, after one year of Israeli offensive in Gaza, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former Palestinian Minister for Foreign Affairs Nasser Al-Kidwa presented Pope Francis with their proposal to end the war devastating their nations. Throughout the conflict, Pope Francis, as in Ukraine, centered the lives of the suffering, choosing to call the only Catholic church in Gaza personally every day, demonstrating, in a most concrete way, his care and concern.Many are mourning after his death. He was mourning with many while he was alive.When he visited the Community of Sant’Egidio in Rome in 2014, he coined 3 Ps to capture its charisms — prayer, the poor, and peace. In this synthesis was both a description and invitation; an invitation to many to make these the pillars of their life.Pope Francis made peace through prayer and care for the poor. He did so until the very end of his earthly journey and continues to invite all to do the same.
[Category: Vatican, Pope francis]
— Stars are aligned for Trump's troop withdrawal from Syria: at 4/23/25 10:05pm
The blitzkrieg offensive which ousted Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024 has sparked an explosive political and military reaction across the country. Al-Qaeda offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) seized Damascus, Israel extended its occupation in southern Syria, and Turkey launched fresh military operations targeting the secular, multi-ethnic, Kurdish-led federation in North and East Syria (NES), where the U.S. has long maintained a military presence with boots on the ground, justified by its anti-ISIS mission. But now the dust has settled, with the U.S. reducing its troop presence in Syria back to pre-December 2024 levels of around 1000. And further changes are imminent. A U.S.-brokered deal between the Kurdish-led/U.S. allied Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) and the new authorities in Damascus, promising the former’s gradual integration into the new Syrian state and military while preserving a degree of autonomy for NES, has created unexpected hopes for a lasting peace in Syria. The deal arrives on the back of not only a détente between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the militant Kurdish group against which Ankara has long used as a pretext for airstrikes and ground invasions targeting the SDF in Syria and sometimes endangering U.S. troops, but also unprecedented talks between the Syrian Kurdish leadership and their rivals in neighboring Iraqi Kurdistan. These factors combine to create a unique opportunity. The U.S. can hand over responsibility to a combined Kurdish, Syrian and regional anti-ISIS mission, while continuing its present efforts to support a political resolution to the 14-year Syrian conflict from afar — thus allowing for a managed withdrawal of American troops. Both the U.S. military and their Syrian Kurdish partners recognize the writing is on the wall. At a recent event assessing a potential U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and Syria, retired CENTCOM commander and long-term advocate for the U.S. military presence in Syria General Joseph Votel acknowledged: “the Trump administration has been clear from the first time they were in office that they don’t see [the U.S.] being engaged in Syria.” Back in 2019, President Trump ordered a shambolic and ultimately unsuccessful withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, paving the way for an immediate Turkish invasion. Hundreds of civilians were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced by Turkey and its Islamist proxy militias before the order was abruptly reversed. This lose-lose situation left the U.S. just as entangled as before, even as it suffered the humiliation of chaos redolent of Joe Biden’s 2021 exit from Kabul. The question is, therefore, can the U.S. actually accomplish a withdrawal while evading the unwanted optics of once again abandoning its erstwhile partners (the Kurds) to a potential slaughter by its adversaries, or worse, creating an even bigger mess that sucks Washington right back into the Syrian quagmire, like Iraq in 2014. Fortunately, this goal looks more achievable than ever following the recent, unexpected developments in Syria. The possibility of heightened chaos following Assad’s fall likely stayed Trump’s hand — what Gen. Votel called a “level of patience” during his first 90 days in office, accepting that he could not withdraw troops immediately. (Following Trump’s global U.S. aid freeze in January 2025, for example, emergency funding was rushed through to Syria, allowing Kurdish-led forces to continue operating the camps and detention centers where they hold over 25,000 ISIS-affiliated detainees from over 50 countries). But unlike in Afghanistan, the U.S. has a trusted, highly-trained partner force in Syria. The SDF commands some 100,000 troops — far more, in fact, than the new rulers in Damascus. On a recent visit to NES I met with Rojhilat Afrin, commander-in-chief of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), the all-female Kurdish force which led ISIS’ defeat. “If ISIS were controlled and guarantees given over [Turkish] attacks, we wouldn’t need external protection,” Afrin said. “We would be able to decide everything ourselves, as Syrians.” In reality, the immediate ISIS threat is significantly degraded, with the terror organization incapable of holding territory even in the post-Assad vacuum. The SDF is by this time well-equipped to deal with the slow-burning ISIS insurgency. When I asked Gen. Votel how the U.S. military could learn the lessons of 2019 and respond to a fresh executive order for a troop pull-out, he suggested the U.S. should prioritize securing those ISIS detainees, consider continued aerial surveillance and intelligence-sharing for the SDF after the U.S.A’s exit, and execute a well-planned withdrawal marked by clear communication up the chain to Washington and down to the SDF, giving the latter fair warning over the U.S.A’s withdrawal plans. Admittedly, there is a genuine threat posed by that army of highly-radicalized ISIS detainees, who will not vanish overnight. However, the U.S. can pressure its allies to follow Washington’s own lead in repatriating and putting on trial their respective ISIS-linked nationals rather than abandoning them to wreak havoc in Syria, as Donald Trump’s anti-terrorism chief this year urged the UK. Failing that, the U.S. can at least push its allies to pull their weight in funding their own nationals’ continued detention by the SDF, in line with Trump’s broader messaging toward Europe. Despite constant talk of ISIS, the U.S. presence served a key secondary purpose as a strategic foothold in a country previously dominated by Assad’s Iranian and Russian allies. ”America is in Syria for its own benefits, not for our benefits as Syrians,” says Hassan Koçer, a senior official in NES’ political administration. But Iranian capacity has been degraded throughout the region by Israeli attacks on its proxies following the Oct. 2023 Hamas attacks and ensuing war in Gaza, thus paving the way for Assad’s deposition, and removing another factor motivating the continued U.S. presence. In reality it’s the second issue raised by Afrin, the threat posed by Turkey, which is the real challenge facing any successful U.S. withdrawal, as we saw in 2019. Gen. Votel pointed to the need for continued diplomatic efforts to support dialog between the SDF, HTS and Turkey like those which have currently halted Turkish hostilities, but again emphasized this political activity needn’t be tied to a physical U.S. military presence. “These problems must be resolved in a political, not a military way, and the [U.S.-led] Coalition has a role in ensuring this is understood,” Koçer says, echoing Votel’s comments. Meanwhile, the new rulers in Damascus appear pragmatically willing to avoid direct conflict with the SDF, an approach which the U.S. can encourage from afar through non-military means such as adding autonomy and security for NES to its pre-existing list of conditions for sanctions relief on Syria. Ongoing Kurdish ‘unity talks’ between historically-opposed progressive and conservative Kurdish factions in Syria and Iraq should further help alleviate Turkey’s claimed concerns over the SDF, given Turkey’s own ties to the latter bloc. Finally, Turkey’s proposed new anti-ISIS coalition with Iraq, Jordan, and the Syrian interim government could offer a vehicle for a rebooted anti-ISIS policy. Requiring these states to collaborate with both U.S.-trained Syrian and Iraqi Kurdish forces and other regional powers such as Saudi Arabia would discourage further regional instability, while also helping pick up the slack against ISIS. The U.S. can thus learn from the mistakes of its botched 2019 withdrawal from Syria to plan a pragmatic, realistic exit from Syria.
[Category: Enewsletter, Trump, Hts, Al-sharaa, Damascus, Assad, Turkey, Kurds, Sdf, Us military, Syria]
— Ukraine and Europe can't afford to refuse Trump's peace plan: at 4/23/25 10:05pm
Most of the peace plan for Ukraine now sketched out by the Trump administration is not new, is based on common sense, and has indeed already been tacitly accepted by Kyiv. Ukrainian officials have acknowledged that its army has no chance in the foreseeable future of reconquering the territories now occupied by Russia. Vice President J.D. Vance’s statement that the U.S. plan would “freeze the territorial lines…close to where they are today” simply acknowledges an obvious fact.On the other hand, by reportedly agreeing to a ceasefire along the present front line, Putin has indicated his readiness to abandon Russia’s demand that Ukraine withdraw from the parts of the provinces claimed by Russia that Ukraine still holds. This too is common sense. The Ukrainians will never agree to give those up, and, judging by the slowness of Russia’s advance to date, conquering these territories in the face of Ukrainian resistance backed by the U.S. would be a long and horribly bloody process from which Russia would gain only devastated wastelands.Even without a U.S. veto, NATO membership for Ukraine is not realistic, both because all existing NATO members have made clear that they will not fight to defend Ukraine, and because several European countries will also veto Kyiv’s membership. Indeed, during the peace talks at the war’s outset, President Volodymyr Zelensky himself said that since all the leading NATO governments (including the Biden administration) had refused to promise NATO membership within five years, a treaty of neutrality with security guarantees was the best way for Ukraine to go.At the same time, the Trump plan contains one big surprise: the offer to recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea. Unlike neutrality and de facto (not de jure) acceptance of Russian control over the other territories, this really constitutes a major concession to Russia. It is not, however, as big as the Western media is suggesting, since it does not cover the other four provinces in eastern Ukraine that Russia claims to have annexed. Nor is it clear yet whether the Trump administration is simply offering formal recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea itself, or whether it — and Moscow — will also insist on Ukraine doing so, which is almost certainly politically impossible for the Zelensky government. White House press spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt has said that Trump’s offer of recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea applies only to the U.S., and that he is not demanding that Ukraine follow suit. Given this ambiguity, it was unwise and thoughtless of Zelensky to declare immediately that “there is nothing to talk about here.” Maybe he doesn’t need to talk about it — and this kind of public rebuff is no way to retain the Trump administration’s sympathy.There is a certain legal, moral, and historical basis for the U.S. at least to treat Crimea differently, since Crimea was only transferred from the Russian Soviet Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic by Soviet decree in 1954, and without any pretense of consultation with the local population. The Crimean majority vote to join Russia in 2014 also appears to have been generally credible, while the “referenda” held by Russia in the other four provinces in the middle of the war are rightly seen as wholly unreliable.Will this plan bring peace? Russia appears close to accepting it — though at least as revealed so far, the plan does not appear to address other Russian demands, including the rights of Russian speakers in Ukraine, limitations on the Ukrainian armed forces, and, above all, a bar on a European “reassurance force” in Ukraine, something on which the British, French, and other governments have been working intensively.It is possible that the Kremlin will try to load additional and genuinely unacceptable conditions onto the peace plan (for example, radical reductions in the Ukrainian armed forces). In that case, Trump should blame Moscow for the failure of the peace process, and, while walking away from it, should also continue U.S. aid to Ukraine.A key motive for Moscow’s acceptance is that the Putin administration is indeed extremely anxious that Trump should blame Ukraine and the Europeans, not Russia, for a failure of the talks, and therefore that if, as threatened, he “walks away” from the peace process, he will also cut off military and intelligence aid to Kyiv.For that same reason, the Ukrainians and Europeans would be insane to reject this plan outright, as initial statements suggest they may. As already noted, the formal goals set by Ukraine, for NATO membership and the recovery of its lost territories, are practically impossible to achieve. In concrete terms therefore, Ukraine loses nothing by agreeing to Trump’s plan. Assuming that the British government sticks to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s statement that a European “reassurance force” can enter Ukraine only if the U.S. acts as a “backstop,” then this force is also not going to happen. Trump has no intention of providing such a guarantee, which would amount to Ukrainian NATO membership by another name. Key European governments including Poland’s have also said that they would not participate in any such force. At present and for a considerable time to come, the British and French armies simply do not seem to have the troops for such a deployment in a context of possible war with Russia. A former British army chief, General Lord Dannatt, has said that (given the need for rotation and training of troops) up to 40,000 British soldiers would need to be designated for such a force, and “we just haven’t got that number available.” Creating such a force for Ukraine would also mean ending British commitments to defend existing NATO members, notably the Baltic states and Poland.At present, the likely response of Kyiv and most European governments to the Trump plan appears to be “no, but.” In other words, they will reject the plan as it stands, but declare their readiness to negotiate on aspects of it. This, however, would be deeply unwise, if indeed Russia is ready to accept it. Trump is waiting on them and he is not a patient man. His administration’s threat to leave Ukraine and Europe to their own devices could hardly have been clearer. As Secretary of State Marco Rubio has stated:“The Ukrainians have to go back home, they have to run it by their president, they have to take into account their views on all of this. But we need to figure out here now, within a matter of days, whether this is doable in the short term. Because if it’s not, then I think we’re just going to move on.”If the U.S. does indeed “move on,” Ukraine will have placed itself in a terribly precarious situation, and West European countries may face a choice between deep humiliation and immense danger. For if U.S. aid is withdrawn, Ukraine’s ability to hold its present line would be greatly reduced, and the chances of a Russian breakthrough greatly increased. If that happened, Europeans would either have to admit that their “ironclad” promises to Ukraine were made of paper, or send their troops into Ukraine. They could of course stay in Kyiv and Odessa, far away from the actual fighting, but how would that help Ukraine? And unless this intervention were worked out as part of a deal with Moscow that ceded much additional territory to Russia, how could European air forces avoid being drawn into direct combat?Given these acute dangers, and given that details of the Trump plan still have to be worked out, the appropriate Ukrainian and European response should be “yes, but” — certainly if they wish to have any hope of retaining Washington’s support for Ukraine. The Trump plan would leave 80% of Ukraine independent and free to try to move towards membership in the European Union, and, in historical terms, that would be a great (albeit qualified) victory for Ukraine. A rejection of that plan can only promise Ukraine greater defeat — possibly catastrophically greater.
[Category: Russia, Ukraine, Donald trump, Diplomacy, Ukraine war]
— Deterrence or creep? US forces quietly surge back to Middle East: at 4/23/25 10:05pm
Since October 7, 2023, the United States has quietly but significantly expanded its military presence across the Middle East, reversing the drawdown that followed its withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. U.S. troop numbers in the region have risen from approximately 34,000 to nearly 50,000 as of late 2024, a level not seen since the first Trump term, in addition to a rapid increase in naval and aerial deployments. This shift reflects a strategic recalibration that appears driven less by long-term planning than by an improvised response to perceived Iranian threats, instability in the Red Sea, and domestic political pressure to “do something” without committing to a full-scale conflict.While these movements have mostly evaded public scrutiny, they mark a significant increase in the regional U.S. force posture. Among the most visible developments has been the deployment of three aircraft carrier strike groups to waters near Yemen: the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, the USS Carl Vinson, and the USS Harry S. Truman, as part of Operation Prosperity Guardian, a multinational task force launched in response to Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping lanes. These carriers have provided air cover for escalating strikes on Houthi targets and infrastructure following the group’s attacks on Red Sea shipping lanes in retaliation for Israel’s war in Gaza. Each carrier strike group also brings an escort of guided-missile cruisers and destroyers, layered with Aegis missile defense systems. Notably, the USS Carl Vinson brings with it a complement of 90 aircraft and 6,000 crew members, enhancing the U.S. Navy's operational capabilities in the region. At the same time, six B-2 stealth bombers — representing nearly 30% of the U.S. Air Force's stealth bomber fleet — have been deployed to Diego Garcia, a remote but strategically located Indian Ocean base that offers a launchpad for long-range missions aimed at deterring Iran and projecting power over the Strait of Hormuz. It marks one of the largest such deployments to the base since the U.S. began building it in 1971.There are also expanded deployments in Jordan and Cyprus that have been formalized through new agreements, as well as rotating Marine and Army units in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Approximately 13,500 U.S. forces are based in Kuwait, primarily at Camp Arifjan and Ali al-Salem Air Base, underscoring the strategic importance of these installations. Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar and Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan have served as key nodes for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) operations, as well as F-15/F-16 sorties. The intensification of ISR operations reflects a shift toward persistent surveillance as a form of deterrence, with unmanned aerial systems and signal intelligence platforms operating across the Gulf and Levant.In March 2025, the Pentagon launched Operation Rough Rider, a significant expansion of its campaign against Houthi-controlled territories in Yemen, using the pretext of anti-piracy and maritime security to justify high-casualty airstrikes on military and logistical targets. Dozens were reported killed in an April 18 strike on the Ras Isa fuel port, drawing condemnation from humanitarian groups and accusations of strategic overreach. After Oct. 7, 2023, the Biden administration framed its Middle East deployments as reactive and defensive, aimed at protecting U.S. personnel and deterring Iranian proxies. But the pattern of force movement tells a more complicated story in which deterrence has increasingly become a doctrine of inertia. Rather than reducing risk, the buildup conveys a constant readiness to escalate without a clear strategy or endgame. Washington is burning high-end military resources to intercept low-cost Houthi projectiles. Each Houthi drone may cost as little as $2,000, while a single U.S. interceptor missile — like a SM-6 or Patriot — can run over $4 million. The result is a tactical loop: the Houthis bleed U.S. stockpiles without altering the strategic balance. In that sense, the most recent surge of U.S. power recalls the post-9/11 “presence-as-policy” paradigm, where military footprint substitutes for political strategy. Compounding the concern is CENTCOM’s growing operational autonomy with field commanders often acting ahead of or outside civilian diplomatic timelines, underscoring a dynamic in which military posture increasingly drives foreign policy, not the other way around.The Trump administration may believe this buildup buys leverage in future Iran negotiations or protects regional allies from Iranian retaliation. But the risk of miscalculation is growing. As more assets are concentrated in volatile theaters, the risks of accidental escalation increase, especially given the proliferation of drone strikes, maritime incidents, and cyber operations. Examples of possible flashpoints: a January 2024 Houthi missile strike on the USS Laboon and an Iranian drone swarm near U.S. bases in Bahrain. What’s less clear is how long this posture can be maintained: the financial cost, logistical burden, and strategic ambiguity raise questions about sustainability, both in Washington and among increasingly anxious allies.Editor's note: This article has been updated to reflect the latest data in U.S. troop deployments in Middle East.
[Category: Gaza war, Palestine, Israel-palestine, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Us military, Israel]
— Pentagon stops being coy about space war: at 4/23/25 10:05pm
The Bunker appears originally at the Project on Government Oversight and is republished here with permission.Arming the heavensThe U.S. Space Force has issued a blueprint (PDF) detailing just what “space warfighting” will mean for the U.S. military battling for the ultimate high ground far above our heads. The 22-page “landmark document underscores the critical importance” for “space superiority,” the command said April 17. More importantly, five years after the creation of the Space Force (during President Trump’s first term), its top brass no longer dance around the touchy issue of waging war on high. Instead of gauzy words like “protecting” and “defending” space, they’re making clear they’re getting ready to attack and destroy up there.“We have a new administration that has us very focused on this,” Space Force’s Lieutenant General Shawn Bratton said. “We’ve got a secretary of defense who’s very interested in warfighting ethos and lethality, and we naturally progress to the point where we’re moving past ‘protect and defend’ and yeah, we’re going to talk about offensive capabilities in space.” (Back in the 1980s, The Bunker recalls the U.S. military sprinkling the radar-eluding “stealth” label like procurement pixie dust on its new wonder weapons. It has been replaced in the Trump administration by “lethal,” which dates back to when a caveman first clubbed his neighbor.)Space war could be a spending supernova for defense contractors. This new “framework for planners” calls for developing offensive “orbital strike” weapons to obliterate enemy satellites, “space link interdiction” to degrade their communications, and “terrestrial strike” to destroy an enemy’s ground-based control centers and launch sites. Defensive desires include “escort” missions, “suppression of adversary counterspace targeting,” and “counterattack” (The Bunker has never had the smarts to separate offensive “attack” missions from defensive “counterattack” missions, which is why he doesn’t own a nice boat in Annapolis).Think of all this hardware as manna for heaven.It’s important for a fledgling war-fighting command to cram as many buzzwords as possible into press releases explaining why its latest notion is key to the future of the U.S. That will help with already underway intramural Pentagon turfs wars, and sure-to-follow Capitol Hill funding fights. The Space Force pushed all those buttons in summing up its new owner’s manual for space: “Space Warfighting marks a significant step forward in solidifying the Space Force as a warfighting service and integral part of the Joint and Combined Force, highlighting the essential role of space superiority for national security.”Sounds like the best thing since sliced dread.Pentagon seeks nuclear microreactors for US basesSpeaking of buzzwords, the Air Force has gotten a lot of PR mileage — if not smart and efficient weapons — by replacing its long-standing quest for “air superiority” (PDF) with one seeking “air dominance.” So why shouldn’t Pentagon technocrats concerned with powering military bases insist on “energy dominance,” too?On April 10, the Pentagon declared eight companies eligible to demonstrate their “nuclear microreactors” for possible use on stateside bases. (The term “microreactor” is undefined, and the solicitation is no longer publicly available.) “Projecting power abroad demands ensuring power at home and this program aims to deliver that, ensuring that our defense leaders can remain focused on lethality [there’s that word again!],” Andrew Higier of the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit said. “Microreactors on installations are a critical first step in delivering energy dominance to the force.” This is a pretty dubious notion. If the electrical grid powering the nation, and the U.S. military bases inside it, goes offline, independently electrified military bases won’t help much. Critics say the scheme is too costly and dangerous.Just like fighting wars in space, harnessing nuclear power on the ground for military bases is part of a peculiar U.S. military obsession that confuses risk with reality. The recent disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq highlight an inability to win despite the world’s most sophisticated military technology. We would do well to recall the Battle of Lexington and Concord, 250 years ago this past weekend. That’s where the highly regarded British Redcoats were vanquished by a ragtag colonial militia. Today’s U.S. armed forces could learn something from their forebears.A foe the US military can beatThe Pentagon, which tried and failed for 20 years to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan, was able to kill all of its diversity, equity, and inclusion jobs less than 100 days into President Trump’s second term. Of course, most of that work had already been done by Congress, which restricted Defense Department DEI efforts in its 2024 defense authorization bill.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth created (PDF) a task force in January that he said was vital to creating a “lethal” military focused on “lethality” (a two-fer!) by halting efforts to diversify its ranks. It reported March 1 “that the military services, the Joint Staff, and the other DOD components conducted evaluations and certified that there is no use of gender, race, or ethnicity-based goals for organizational composition, academic admissions, or career fields,” the Government Accountability Office said in an April 17 letter (PDF) to Congress. “Further, the report identified key actions the military services and DOD components took to ensure that no boards, councils, and working groups promote DEI and other related concepts.”Given the Trump administration’s anti-DEI fetish — and the time, focus, and words they have dedicated to wiping it out — you’re forgiven if you think Pentagon hallways are now strewn with victims of this purge.But under that 2024 law, the GAO reported (PDF) that only 32 DEI positions were eliminated among the Pentagon’s 950,000 civilian workers. The Defense Department has restricted 115 other jobs “to reduce or eliminate the positions’ DEI duties,” it added, also under that legislation. And the Pentagon, it noted, “did not widely use contractors to develop and implement DEI activities.”So how many additional DEI slots did Trump’s January edict barring them from the Pentagon end up cutting?Forty-one, including both civilian and military personnel. All those positions, the GAO said, have since been “abolished or restructured” to avoid DEI cooties.Here’s what has caught The Bunker’s eye recently→ Dome sweet domeElon Musk’s SpaceX is a frontrunner to build Trump’s Golden Dome missile shield, Reuters’ Mike Stone and Marisa Taylor reported April 17.→ Flying solo…The current zany state of the U.S. government should drive its allies to create a weapons-production conglomerate capable of developing and producing modern arms without the U.S., veteran Brit-born aerospace journalist Bill Sweetman wrote April 15 in The Strategist.→ Dodging a warhead…The April 16 explosion that destroyed a Northrop solid-rocket motor building in Utah won’t affect the over-budget and delayed Sentinel ICBM the company is building for the Pentagon’s nuclear triad, John Tirpak of Air & Space Forces Magazine reported April 17.Thanks for not dodging The Bunker this week. Please consider lobbing this on to friends and/or foes so they can subscribe here.
[Category: Pentagon budget, The bunker, Space force]
— Could a Blobby enclave be sowing chaos at DoD?: at 4/23/25 8:26am
UPDATE 4/24, 5:15 PM: The Defense Policy Board website has been scrubbed, as reported by The Intercept. The list of DPB members can still be viewed on an archived version of the website. Discussing alleged Pentagon leaks with Tucker Carlson on Monday, recently ousted DoD official and Iraq war veteran Dan Caldwell charged that there are a number of career staff in the Pentagon who oppose the current administration’s policies. He then took particular aim at the the Defense Policy Board as a potential source of ongoing leaks to the press.Caldwell claimed “most of the [DoD] leaks” were probably coming from career staff “hostile to the secretary, to the president, vice president's worldview.” But, he also told Carlson that “there's a less obvious place” the leaks could come from: the Defense Policy Board, which advises the secretary of defense on matters related to defense policy.There is no evidence to his claim about the leaks, nor has there been any insight into the investigation reportedly embroiling Caldwell and two others who were pushed out of the Pentagon last Friday. Statements by Caldwell, who was serving as senior adviser to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and others suggest the accusations against them are a setup. Caldwell’s interview with Carlson did little to shed light onto who specifically might be behind them, or why, though a Drop Site News report late yesterday underscored the fierce internal infighting that could have led to the present circumstances. But the interview did draw fresh attention to the Defense Policy Board, which is quite unknown outside the Beltway, but does wield influence inside the Pentagon as a repository for former high level national security officials who are tasked with providing “independent, informed advice and opinions on matters of defense policy” to the E-Ring.As Caldwell pointed out, today the current DPB is filled with Biden-era appointments like former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice, and Michele Flournoy, who also worked in the Pentagon during the Obama administration and is now a high-powered consultant working with the defense and tech industry. It also includes Michael O’Hanlon of Brookings, an early, integral think tank supporter of the War in Iraq, and Richard Fontaine, CEO of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), an enthusiastic proponent of the counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign during the first Obama administration. He served in various national security roles during the wars, including as Sen. John McCain’s foreign policy advisor.The board has likely not met since Trump’s inauguration and it would be no surprise if it’s entirely replaced, as the undersecretary for policy planning oversees the panel and Elbridge Colby was just confirmed to the post two weeks ago. Trump fired the board after he lost the 2020 election and Biden fired and replaced Trump’s replacements in 2021 with the current roster.The faces, names and political affiliations may change, but members have largely reflected the same consensus thinking about using and sustaining U.S. power abroad, whether it be for maintaining the global liberal order or confronting great power conflict. Past members have included foreign policy luminaries such as Henry Kissinger and Madeline Albright, who once famously said, “What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?”Many have sailed through the revolving door between government, think tanks, academia, and the defense industry and have been integral to the failed policies that led to and prolonged U.S. wars and smaller interventions abroad since 9/11. In addition to Washington mainstay Susan Rice, for example, DPB member Kori Schake is director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, which essentially served as the brain trust for the Iraq War. Today it is regularly pushing for further Pentagon budget increases. In a 2022 Foreign Affairs article, Schake herself called for a DoD budget exceeding $1 trillion.Neoconservative and former U.S. Ambassador Eric Edelman, who had served in the Bush and Obama administrations, is also a long-time Washington war-hawk, previously pushing a hard line on Iran’s nuclear program and for U.S. intervention in the Syrian civil war. Current DBP member Jack Keane, former vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army, was a key figure in pushing President Bush to “surge” U.S. troops into Iraq in 2007 and was an aggressive cheerleader for the aforementioned COIN and pushing more troops into Afghanistan in 2009.Notably, Keane subsequently served as executive chairman of military contractor AM General, which obtained a $459 million contract in 2017 to send more than 2,000 Humvees to Afghanistan — profiting from his previous policy recommendation to Congress.A DoD representative told RS the DBP website is “up to date.” And yet, some members’ online profiles suggest it may not be : the official website says Flournoy is a member; her bios on Council on Foreign Relations and Center for a New American Security pages, however, say she is a former one. For now, however, the DPB’s composition is representative of a Washington highly resistant to change, particularly to the “America First” approach that questions whether the policies of the past 30 years have made the U.S. any safer or more prosperous. Again, it is not clear how much access that DPB members, together or individually, have to the Pentagon today or whether they even have access to the type of inside information that's been allegedly leaked. But musing that his restraint-minded foreign policy views played a role in his ouster, Caldwell alleged the old establishment’s entrenchment inside could have ruptured informational leaks helping throw the DoD into disarray — mere months into the new administration.“We had people who had personal vendettas against us, and I think they weaponized the investigation against us. I think that’s part of what’s going on here,” Caldwell alleged on Carlson’s show. “And of course, I have some views about the role of America in the world, you know, as we discussed, [a] little controversial. All of us [who were fired] in our ways threatened really established interests.”
[Category: Dod, Hegseth, Blob, Defense policy board, Flournoy, Keane, O'hanlon, Edelman, Caldwell, Pentagon]
— Why the US can't beat al-Shabaab in Somalia: at 4/22/25 10:05pm
The New York Times reported earlier this month that recent gains by al-Shabaab Islamist militants in central and southern Somalia has prompted a debate within the State Department about closing the U.S. Embassy in Mogadishu and withdrawing most American personnel. At the forefront of some officials’ minds, according to the Times, are memories of recent foreign policy fiascos, such as the fall of the Afghan government amid a hasty American withdrawal in 2021. There are good reasons to question why the U.S. has been unable to defeat al-Shabaab despite nearly 20 years of U.S. military involvement in the country. But the scale of the U.S. role is drastically different than that of Afghanistan, and the U.S. cannot necessarily be described as the most significant external security actor on the ground. At the same time, the Trump administration has given no indication that it will scale down drone strikes — meaning that the U.S. will continue to privilege military solutions. Flaws in the Afghanistan analogy The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 is often brought up as a potential outcome in Somalia. This analogy appears to have taken more urgency recently as al-Shabaab has regained some of the territories it had been evicted from since 2022. While the analogy is helpful in some regards — including, highlighting the stubborn pliability of al-Shabaab and the fragility of the Somali government — it is misleading in one important aspect: the American military presence in Somalia has never been comparable to the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, which at its peak reached over 100,000 troops. By comparison, the U.S. has about 500 to 600 military personal in Somalia, largely because it has sought to avoid the costs that come with deploying significant numbers of its own troops, instead relying on Somali and other African troops to fight al-Shabaab. For the past decade, the U.S. has trained, equipped, and financed an elite commando unit, “Danab” (lightning), numbering between 3,000-5,000 soldiers. Alongside the European Union, the U.S. was a key financial contributor to the African Union (AU) mission in Somalia, which at one point included 22,000 forces. But the U.S. has recently signaled that financial support for the AU mission will be cut, and it’s unclear how the newly mandated African Union Support and Stabilization Mission will be financed. Consequently, it is not certain that a drawdown of U.S. diplomatic presence would significantly alter the situation on the ground given the scope of U.S. military engagement in Somalia. Moreover, there are other players who shape the political, economic, and security landscape in Somalia, including Ethiopia, the UAE, and Turkey. Turkey is arguably Mogadishu’s most important security and diplomatic partner today. Turkey has its biggest embassy and military training center, Camp TURKSOM, in Mogadishu. Somalia and Turkey have signed a raft of military/security and economic agreements over the past decade and half. The Turkish trained “Gorgor” (eagle) regiment, along with the American trained Danab are the two most effective fighting units against al-Shabaab. As al-Shabaab made some gains over the past couple of months, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud made two trips to Ankara, where he has reportedly signed an agreement that would allow Turkish private forces to actively assist and lead Somali security forces in the fights against al-Shabaab. In light of Turkey’s increasingly prominent role in Mogadishu’s security/military calculations, the scaling back of U.S. diplomatic presence in Mogadishu may have limited impact. We could, instead, see a deepening of Turkish military/security assistance to Mogadishu, and engagement in the fight against al-Shabaab.The fallacy of a military solutionThe discussion within the State Department appears to be debating two alternatives. The first is reduction and/or withdrawal of U.S. Embassy staff in Mogadishu with the fear that this would further undermine confidence in the Somali government and hasten its collapse. The second is staying the course and potentially increasing the drone campaign against al-Shabaab. It is not clear what U.S. policy makers hope to gain by increasing the drone campaign against al-Shabaab that has not been achieved over the past two decades of (undeclared) war with al-Shabaab. It is noteworthy that the Times failed to ask the more difficult question, namely, why is al-Shabaab on the front foot after over a decade and half of war? I offer two points for consideration. First, alongside the military campaign against al-Shabaab, a range of foreign governments have supported a state-building project in Somalia since 2009. Theoretically, this endeavor was meant to accompany the military campaign against al-Shabaab by putting in place an accountable government. What has instead transpired over the past decade and half is the emergence of a government in Mogadishu that is dependent on external support, focused on the capture of foreign and domestic funds and contracts, and beholden to donor demands. Rather than creating inclusive institutions and governance systems focused on service delivery, the state-building process has produced a bargain between Somali elites and the donor industry that is removed from local realities and legitimacy. The government in Mogadishu is outward looking and detached, for the most part, from the concerns of the local population, except via lineage-based patronage networks to secure indirect and corrupt electoral advantages. Thus, basic governance and service delivery has progressed very little over the past 15 years. Al-Shabaab’s resilience is, therefore, a symptom of these state-building and governance failures. Second, it’s important to keep in mind a few things about al-Shabaab as an organization. Its rejection of the presence of foreign troops in Somalia is something that resonates with people. The fact that al-Shabaab itself has foreign fighters in its midst has been a point of contention within al-Shabaab, and in the larger society. In contrast to the Somali government, al-Shabaab has always had a more effective outreach campaign by, for instance, utilizing Somali oral poetry, a deeply-rooted cultural tradition, to reach the local population. Its outreach campaign remains potent even as its wanton violence has alienated the majority of the population. In its recent offensive, al-Shabaab is reported to have shifted its tactics and strategies. The group has reportedly de-emphasized the use of large-scale indiscriminate bombings. Furthermore, unconfirmed reports suggest al-Shabaab is offering to forgive government soldiers they capture, and telling communities that they will be allowed to continue their lives and no revenge will be meted out to those who previously worked with the government, in exchange for abstaining from associating with the government. The continued governance failures by the internationally backed Somali government, combined with al-Shabaab’s strategies and adaptations makes it unlikely that a continuous American drone campaign will be any more effective now than it has been in the past. Without a more thorough examination of the shortcomings of the international military engagement and state-building activities in Somalia, the discussion about closing the U.S. Embassy in Mogadishu is in some ways a smokescreen and a knee-jerk reaction. What is needed instead is a more fundamental reconsideration of military solutions to what are ultimately political problems.
[Category: Horn of africa, Somalia, Enewsletter]
— Huckabee justifies food blockade to people he once said don’t exist: at 4/22/25 12:37pm
U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, acknowledged Monday that Israel is blocking humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza, which is a war crime under international law, including the Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute.In a video posted to social media, Huckabee, who once said Palestinians don’t really exist, said the “real pressure” belongs on Hamas to sign “an agreement” to release hostages first.A @WHO official called upon me to put pressure on Israel to bring more humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza. How about we put the pressure where it really belongs – on Hamas. pic.twitter.com/5AAv5Q63DD— Ambassador Mike Huckabee (@USAmbIsrael) April 21, 2025 The ambassador’s statement came after direct pressure from the World Health Organization to end the almost two-month blockade. Additionally, multiple heads of United Nations agencies released a joint statement earlier in the month, saying “with the tightened Israeli blockade on Gaza now in its second month, we appeal to world leaders to act – firmly, urgently and decisively – to ensure the basic principles of international humanitarian law are upheld.”Indeed, most aid agencies have ended operations in the strip, and agency officials have reported that children are suffering from severe malnutrition, often eating only one meal a day.“This action would further aggravate conditions of life calculated to destroy the Palestinian population of Gaza. No one benefits from this—not the Palestinians, not the Israelis, not the North Americans—none of us. Together, we can stop this monstrosity,” said Francesca Albanese, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, in her response. She also reminded the ambassador that blocking humanitarian aid was a war crime.“This is a flagrant violation of both international law and American law. It is atrocious that an American diplomat would express full-throated support for such an atrocity,” commented the Quincy Institute’s Annelle Sheline.The cease-fire agreements and proposals on the table have never conditioned aid upon the release of all hostages. In fact, Hamas has offered the release of all hostages under different proposals. Additionally, Benjamin Netanyahu has thwarted the process itself with new demands.“They (Netanyahu’s government) are not interested in reaching a deal, so no 'pressure' on Hamas is going to change their thinking,” said Sheline.
[Category: Mike huckabee, Gaza, Qiosk, Blockade, Famine, Middle east, Israel]

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