Crooked Bough News Round-up

— Iran talks: At least they still negotiating

 

at 5/12/25 7:41am

The fourth round of nuclear talks between Iran and the United States concluded Sunday in Muscat, Oman after a one-week delay. Many observers saw the postponement as a result of the Trump administration’s contradictory approach and lack of a clear endgame. Just two days before the talks, U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff gave an interview to Breitbart, seeming to suggest “zero enrichment” as the administration’s red line and calling for the dismantlement of Iran’s core nuclear facilities. This maximalist stance stood in contrast with more measured comments by President Trump, who recently said the United States had "not yet decided" whether Iran could retain a civilian nuclear program. Vice President J.D. Vance struck a similarly ambiguous tone at a recent conference in Europe. These conflicting messages have added to the uncertainty surrounding Washington’s true objectives and raised questions about whether it seeks a viable diplomatic outcome or is preparing for confrontation. Meanwhile, ahead of Sunday’s talks, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi reaffirmed that uranium enrichment is a national red line. He cited the blood of Iranian scientists as the price paid for this right, and warned that the contradictory messages from Washington — one message inside the negotiating room and another in public — are undermining trust. Regional dynamics are also complicating the path forward. Trump’s push for a negotiated outcome is increasingly at odds with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is continuing to advocate for military strikes. Israel sees any deal that allows Iran to retain enrichment capabilities as a strategic defeat. At the same time, Trump is preparing for a high-stakes trip to the Arabian Peninsula, where he hopes to secure investment deals with countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE. These governments have made clear their desire to develop civilian nuclear programs. If the United States recognizes Iran’s right to enrichment, it may find itself in the uncomfortable position of denying that same right to its Arab partners. In this context, the administration’s hardline rhetoric ahead of the Muscat talks may have been aimed not only at Tehran, but also at Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. The result is a negotiating approach that appears reactive and shaped more by political optics than strategic clarity. The Muscat talks may have kept diplomacy alive for now, but without a coherent and realistic endgame from Washington, the chances for a lasting agreement will diminish.

[Category: Iran nuclear program, Israel, Iran]

— 'Terrorism'? Israel has weaponized the charge for decades

 

at 5/11/25 10:05pm

What do human rights activists in Jerusalem, humanitarian aid workers in Gaza, and college students in New York all have in common according to Israel and its influence network? They all purportedly have links to terrorism. Although such accusations are often baseless, they are frequently used to besmirch and undercut those who are unwilling to do Israel’s bidding. Although this is a tactic very much on display today, it is one I first came across while serving with the U.S. Security Coordinator (USSC) in the West Bank, when a similar pattern of accusations and complaints from Israel, as documented in a report that has not been previously disclosed, threatened to wreck what was, back then in 2008, already a tenuous peace process in the West Bank. The USSC often acts as an unofficial broker between the Israeli and Palestinian security sectors. Despite significant progress in the delivery of security on the Palestinian side, Israel was dragging its feet, claiming a lack of confidence in the Palestinian Security Forces. The Israelis’ basic argument was that the Palestinian Authority was not taking sufficient action against individuals Israel accused of terrorism, and therefore Israel did not have the confidence to deliver its side of the negotiations — to reduce checkpoints and IDF presence in the West Bank. With the usual public relations savvy, Israel argued both privately and in the press that the Palestinian Authority security system was nothing more than a "revolving door" in that the Palestinian Authority would arrest people Israel had claimed to be terrorists or have ties to terrorists, but then quickly release them. The Bush administration at the time was committed to the negotiations process under the Roadmap for Peace, but with Israel threatening to halt any progress on the basis of its concerns, the U.S. decided it would have to step in and address them. As the USSC lead for Palestinian security sector governance, I was charged with leading a study of the alleged "revolving door" problem, and with colleagues including a senior UK police officer and a Canadian military officer, conducted a thorough review of the allegations, producing an official report, which was briefed to both Palestinian and Israeli officials, and to the U.S. National Security Council. That study, officially titled, “The Jenin Revolving Door Report,” was not a victory for any of the parties involved. Although some of the context it addressed is now somewhat dated, some of its key findings remain very relevant today, given the allegations that led to the report and the parallel pattern we see today of Israel making accusations of terrorism against individuals and organizations it views as adversaries, complaining when these accusations are not acted upon in a manner that Israel finds sufficient, and then leveraging its allegations and complaints as a part of a public relations strategy. The report has never been publicly released. Given the passage of time, but also due to its relevance and the value of transparency, the complete text may be found here (with redactions only to protect the names of the other authors). The report found was that there were plenty of challenges for all sides to address. For instance, when it came to the Palestinian side, the report concluded that "Palestinian law on some of the critical issues is often vague, and sometimes contradictory. The Palestinian criminal justice system is both overloaded and under-resourced." However, more germane to the broader pattern, and the one we see today, of Israeli government weakly-sourced accusations and its subsequent complaints of inaction, are the findings of the report as it relates to Israel's approach, and in particular that: "A final element to be considered here is the method by which Israel does transfer requests for arrest, detention, or other security actions to the Palestinian Authority. The common mechanism for this is the provision by the Israeli security establishment to elements of the Palestinian security establishment, of “lists” of targets (which may be people or institutions) and ‘actions requested,’ such as arrests or closures. "These lists, which are not displayed in this report due to their sensitive nature, but examples of which have been viewed by the reporting team, commonly lack any evidence to substantiate the validity of the targets. Indeed, Palestinian reviews of the lists have shown many of them to be inaccurate or outdated, requesting, for example, the detention of deceased persons. These lists, then[,] represent the meeting of the thin requirements of the Israeli military and intelligence establishment with the rather more weighty ones of the Palestinian criminal justice system. The P.A. cannot simply arrest and administratively detain persons because Israel wants it done; it has processes it must follow, and these processes coincide, for the most part, with international human rights and legal best practice." The provision of a list of names does not by itself constitute hard evidence for anything and in the experience of the U.S. Security Coordinator at the time I served in it, Israel's lists were often flawed and inaccurate, as the Revolving Door Report describes. Then, Israel refused to provide any corroborating information to substantiate its accusations, claiming that its accusations derived from sensitive intelligence sources. But even then, intelligence, as any national security official will tell you, is not evidence, and is often wrong. Raw intelligence reporting may be the standard upon which Israel conducts detention operations — or even lethal strikes — but it does not suffice for any use by a third party, unless that third party is willing to take it on trust. In my experience, even the United States, which does tend to take Israeli allegations and claims at face value, has also developed an institutional understanding over time that there is often less to these Israeli allegations than meets the eye, like when it came to Israel's justifications for a strike in Gaza in 2021 that leveled a high rise building that multiple news agencies used as their offices, or as when, in 2022, Israel accused six Palestinian human rights organizations of terrorist ties. In addition to recommending steps to close the gap between Israeli intelligence leads and substantiated facts that could meet evidentiary standards, the Revolving Door Report recommended that "Israel should thoroughly review its [own] current arrest and detention practices … in order to bring them into accord with international law," a recommendation that, as the UK government determined last September, it does not meet to this day. The report also suggested a certain irony in Israel's identification of targets and complaints of inaction by third parties given the exploitation of its detention system as an intelligence tool for the purposes of serving Israeli interests: "Israel does not try every Palestinian it detains, nor, although statistics are not available at this time, does it detain for significant periods every Palestinian it arrests. Rather, arrests and detentions form a regular part of intelligence gathering activities for the Government of Israel, and are often thought to be more pre-emptive or deterrent than they are reactive to specific threats. As Israel focuses on threats to its own state and citizens, it likely prioritizes these threats above those which are directed against the Palestinian Authority. From a Palestinian perspective, therefore, it is often seen that Israel, aside from the legality of its actions in arresting and detaining Palestinians, does itself maintain a revolving door. ..." Today, we see similar allegations used not to derail a peace process, but to undermine the credibility of those who express concern regarding, or protest against, Israel’s violence against Palestinians. One example can be found when Israel shuttered six Palestinian human rights organizations in 2022 amid allegations that they operated as a front for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The Israeli government raided the offices of one of those organizations — Defense of Children International Palestine (DCIP) — one day after the United States informed Israel that it found DCIP’s reporting of the rape of a child in an Israeli detention facility credible. Many Western governments responded by cutting all ties with these organizations, only to quietly re-establish those ties several months later when Israel failed to produce any compelling evidence for its accusations. More recently, in the context of its broader efforts to undercut the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Israel has again, and with much public fanfare, levied a series of allegations that 108 of UNRWA’s employees in Gaza are members of Hamas's military wing, the Izzedin al Qassam Brigades. To date, UNRWA has been unable to substantiate those accusations, and despite UNRWA’s good-faith requests as it conducts an investigation, Israel has not provided any further evidence to back up its allegations. And now, in a continuation of this pattern which is as alarming as it is absurd, similar accusations have made their way into the U.S. legal system. In a legal filing brought in late March, Israel’s American surrogates accused the Columbia University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine of having foreknowledge of Hamas’s October 7 attack. This accusation — which appears to be based on the single testimony of an Israeli hostage of a claim made by his captors— is bizarre given that Hamas didn’t even give its sponsor Iran tactical warning. Why would Hamas leaders alert some college students in New York? Regardless of the accusation’s merit, the reputational damage to SJP is done.As the work conducted in the Revolving Door Report demonstrates when it comes to Israeli allegations of terrorism, there is often less than meets the eye. Going forward, organizations and individuals facing thinly-sourced Israeli allegations of ties to terrorism should demand substantive evidence. If Israel cannot or will not provide such evidence, it should be ignored.

[Category: Palestine, West bank, Gaza, Gaza war, Israel-palestine, Israel]

— How Israel weaponizes allegations of terrorism

 

at 5/11/25 10:05pm

What do human rights activists in Jerusalem, humanitarian aid workers in Gaza, and college students in New York all have in common according to Israel and its influence network? They all purportedly have links to terrorism. Although such accusations are often baseless, they are frequently used to besmirch and undercut those who are unwilling to do Israel’s bidding. Although this is a tactic very much on display today, it is one I first came across while serving with the U.S. Security Coordinator (USSC) in the West Bank, when a similar pattern of accusations and complaints from Israel, as documented in a report that has not been previously disclosed, threatened to wreck what was, back then in 2008, already a tenuous peace process in the West Bank. The USSC often acts as an unofficial broker between the Israeli and Palestinian security sectors. Despite significant progress in the delivery of security on the Palestinian side, Israel was dragging its feet, claiming a lack of confidence in the Palestinian Security Forces. The Israelis’ basic argument was that the Palestinian Authority was not taking sufficient action against individuals Israel accused of terrorism, and therefore Israel did not have the confidence to deliver its side of the negotiations — to reduce checkpoints and IDF presence in the West Bank. With the usual public relations savvy, Israel argued both privately and in the press that the Palestinian Authority security system was nothing more than a "revolving door" in that the Palestinian Authority would arrest people Israel had claimed to be terrorists or have ties to terrorists, but then quickly release them. The Bush administration at the time was committed to the negotiations process under the Roadmap for Peace, but with Israel threatening to halt any progress on the basis of its concerns, the U.S. decided it would have to step in and address them. As the USSC lead for Palestinian security sector governance, I was charged with leading a study of the alleged "revolving door" problem, and with colleagues including a senior UK police officer and a Canadian military officer, conducted a thorough review of the allegations, producing an official report, which was briefed to both Palestinian and Israeli officials, and to the U.S. National Security Council. That study, officially titled, “The Jenin Revolving Door Report,” was not a victory for any of the parties involved. Although some of the context it addressed is now somewhat dated, some of its key findings remain very relevant today, given the allegations that led to the report and the parallel pattern we see today of Israel making accusations of terrorism against individuals and organizations it views as adversaries, complaining when these accusations are not acted upon in a manner that Israel finds sufficient, and then leveraging its allegations and complaints as a part of a public relations strategy. The report has never been publicly released. Given the passage of time, but also due to its relevance and the value of transparency, the complete text may be found here (with redactions only to protect the names of the other authors). The report found was that there were plenty of challenges for all sides to address. For instance, when it came to the Palestinian side, the report concluded that "Palestinian law on some of the critical issues is often vague, and sometimes contradictory. The Palestinian criminal justice system is both overloaded and under-resourced." However, more germane to the broader pattern, and the one we see today, of Israeli government weakly-sourced accusations and its subsequent complaints of inaction, are the findings of the report as it relates to Israel's approach, and in particular that: "A final element to be considered here is the method by which Israel does transfer requests for arrest, detention, or other security actions to the Palestinian Authority. The common mechanism for this is the provision by the Israeli security establishment to elements of the Palestinian security establishment, of “lists” of targets (which may be people or institutions) and ‘actions requested,’ such as arrests or closures. "These lists, which are not displayed in this report due to their sensitive nature, but examples of which have been viewed by the reporting team, commonly lack any evidence to substantiate the validity of the targets. Indeed, Palestinian reviews of the lists have shown many of them to be inaccurate or outdated, requesting, for example, the detention of deceased persons. These lists, then[,] represent the meeting of the thin requirements of the Israeli military and intelligence establishment with the rather more weighty ones of the Palestinian criminal justice system. The P.A. cannot simply arrest and administratively detain persons because Israel wants it done; it has processes it must follow, and these processes coincide, for the most part, with international human rights and legal best practice." The provision of a list of names does not by itself constitute hard evidence for anything and in the experience of the U.S. Security Coordinator at the time I served in it, Israel's lists were often flawed and inaccurate, as the Revolving Door Report describes. Then, Israel refused to provide any corroborating information to substantiate its accusations, claiming that its accusations derived from sensitive intelligence sources. But even then, intelligence, as any national security official will tell you, is not evidence, and is often wrong. Raw intelligence reporting may be the standard upon which Israel conducts detention operations — or even lethal strikes — but it does not suffice for any use by a third party, unless that third party is willing to take it on trust. In my experience, even the United States, which does tend to take Israeli allegations and claims at face value, has also developed an institutional understanding over time that there is often less to these Israeli allegations than meets the eye, like when it came to Israel's justifications for a strike in Gaza in 2021 that leveled a high rise building that multiple news agencies used as their offices, or as when, in 2022, Israel accused six Palestinian human rights organizations of terrorist ties. In addition to recommending steps to close the gap between Israeli intelligence leads and substantiated facts that could meet evidentiary standards, the Revolving Door Report recommended that "Israel should thoroughly review its [own] current arrest and detention practices … in order to bring them into accord with international law," a recommendation that, as the UK government determined last September, it does not meet to this day. The report also suggested a certain irony in Israel's identification of targets and complaints of inaction by third parties given the exploitation of its detention system as an intelligence tool for the purposes of serving Israeli interests: "Israel does not try every Palestinian it detains, nor, although statistics are not available at this time, does it detain for significant periods every Palestinian it arrests. Rather, arrests and detentions form a regular part of intelligence gathering activities for the Government of Israel, and are often thought to be more pre-emptive or deterrent than they are reactive to specific threats. As Israel focuses on threats to its own state and citizens, it likely prioritizes these threats above those which are directed against the Palestinian Authority. From a Palestinian perspective, therefore, it is often seen that Israel, aside from the legality of its actions in arresting and detaining Palestinians, does itself maintain a revolving door. ..." Today, we see similar allegations used not to derail a peace process, but to undermine the credibility of those who express concern regarding, or protest against, Israel’s violence against Palestinians. One example can be found when Israel shuttered six Palestinian human rights organizations in 2022 amid allegations that they operated as a front for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The Israeli government raided the offices of one of those organizations — Defense of Children International Palestine (DCIP) — one day after the United States informed Israel that it found DCIP’s reporting of the rape of a child in an Israeli detention facility credible. Many Western governments responded by cutting all ties with these organizations, only to quietly re-establish those ties several months later when Israel failed to produce any compelling evidence for its accusations. More recently, in the context of its broader efforts to undercut the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Israel has again, and with much public fanfare, levied a series of allegations that 108 of UNRWA’s employees in Gaza are members of Hamas's military wing, the Izzedin al Qassam Brigades. To date, UNRWA has been unable to substantiate those accusations, and despite UNRWA’s good-faith requests as it conducts an investigation, Israel has not provided any further evidence to back up its allegations. And now, in a continuation of this pattern which is as alarming as it is absurd, similar accusations have made their way into the U.S. legal system. In a legal filing brought in late March, Israel’s American surrogates accused the Columbia University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine of having foreknowledge of Hamas’s October 7 attack. This accusation — which appears to be based on the single testimony of an Israeli hostage of a claim made by his captors— is bizarre given that Hamas didn’t even give its sponsor Iran tactical warning. Why would Hamas leaders alert some college students in New York? Regardless of the accusation’s merit, the reputational damage to SJP is done.As the work conducted in the Revolving Door Report demonstrates when it comes to Israeli allegations of terrorism, there is often less than meets the eye. Going forward, organizations and individuals facing thinly-sourced Israeli allegations of ties to terrorism should demand substantive evidence. If Israel cannot or will not provide such evidence, it should be ignored.

[Category: Palestine, West bank, Gaza, Gaza war, Israel-palestine, Israel]

— The hidden costs of Trump's 'madman' approach to tariffs

 

at 5/11/25 10:05pm

Is the trade war launched by Donald Trump the act of a madman or a mad genius? To the extent Trump’s tariffs are a “negotiating strategy,” as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has claimed, are critics missing that they are simply part of the “art of the deal” that will enable America to gain coercive leverage over other states? According to the madman theory of international politics, it is possible Trump’s gambit has a strategic logic. However, there is a crucial flaw with this strategy that will likely cause it to fail.The madman theory was developed in the nuclear weapons era by the scholars Daniel Ellsberg(the famous, or infamous, leaker of the Pentagon Papers) and Thomas Schelling (who won the Nobel Prize in economics). Its logic is that some threats, such as launching a nuclear attack against a nuclear-armed opponent, inherently lack credibility because carrying them out would be irrational in that it would cause both the target state and the threatening state great pain. However, if the leader making the threat is perceived as irrational or crazy, then the threat may actually be believable, and the target could decide that backing down to avoid punishment is the prudent option. As Richard Nixon said in a private oval office discussion with his chief of staff in 1968:“I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe that I’ve reached the point that I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that ‘for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about Communism. We can’t restrain him when he is angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button’—and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.”Trump’s tariff strategy may follow a similar logic. According to the Yale Budget Lab, Trump’s tariffs could increase prices for the average American household by almost $5,000 just this year. Given the mutual costs Trump’s tariffs involve, his threats may lack credibility on their face, just as many nuclear threats do.However, to the extent Trump is perceived of as at least somewhat crazy, his threats may be more believable than if he was viewed as rational. In fact, like Nixon, Trump is a self-professed fan of the madman strategy. For example, in a discussion with top cabinet officials regarding the U.S.-South Korea trade deal in 2017, Trump reportedly told Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. Trade Representative:“You’ve got 30 days, and if you don’t get concessions then I’m pulling out.” “Ok, well I’ll tell the Koreans they’ve got 30 days,” Lighthizer replied. “No, no, no,” Trump interjected. “That’s not how you negotiate. You don’t tell them they’ve got 30 days. You tell them, this guy’s so crazy he could pull out any minute…You tell them if they don’t give the concessions now, this crazy guy will pull out of the deal.”Trump’s plan to end the U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement in his first term was ultimately foiled by Gary Cohn, his chief economic advisor, who reportedly stole from Trump’s desk a letter that would have made the withdrawal official after Trump signed it. However, with a team of more loyal and pliant advisors installed in his second term, Trump has been able to follow through on his trade war strategy based on the madman theory.Trump also seems to believe that this strategy is having the intended effect: “I am telling you, these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. They are dying to make a deal…‘Please, sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything sir.’” Indeed, the European Union and countries like Vietnam and Israel have offered to lower trade barriers on American goods in return for the removal of Trump’s tariffs. The U.S. and Britain also just struck a trade deal that ostensibly involves some real, even if limited, concessions by the United Kingdom.Despite some advantages, however, the madman strategy is far from a panacea and entails significant drawbacks that will likely limit what Trump is able to achieve. One major issue (for which I provided evidence in a peer-reviewed study that conducted surveys of the American public) is that a leader who is perceived as mad is likely to face increasing levels of disapproval among their own domestic public. This can then undermine their bargaining leverage with foreign leaders.The madman strategy is generally unpopular domestically because the public values competence in leaders, and thus is unlikely to look kindly on a leader it perceives of as actually or potentially crazy. Alexander Hamilton made this argument about John Adams, a member of his own Federalist Party, when discussing the “great and intrinsic defects in his character, which unfit him for the office of Chief Magistrate.” Richard Nixon said much the same in a private Oval Office conversation in 1973, when he said, “We are never going to have a madman as president, in this office…Ours [system] throws them out…about every four years, if a guy shows that he’s [unclear phrase], out!” That is one key reason why Nixon kept his own attempt to use the madman strategy to convince the Soviets and Vietnamese he was crazy and might use nuclear weapons to win the Vietnam War secret from the American public.This reasoning helps explain why Trump’s trade war is unpopular domestically. Moreover, well-known psychological biases make average citizens more averse to losses than they are attracted to gains. In the case of a trade war, this means the public is likely to be wary of paying higher prices than they were previously in return for the theoretical promise of greater domestic production in the future. This is especially the case given that Trump’s promises to tame inflation was one of his campaign’s most effective selling points in winning the presidency last fall.The domestic unpopularity of the madman strategy can undermine a leader’s leverage in negotiations with other states, as foreigners may doubt the leader will have the political capital to enact or maintain the threatened policies in the short, medium, or long term. This is what appears to be happening in the case of Trump’s tariffs, as the strongly negative reaction among the U.S. public and business community—the fact that that, in Trump’s words, “they were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid”—forced the president to dramatically reverse course and pause the tariffs for 90 days before even a single deal was struck, undermining his bargaining leverage. Some foreign governments may now question whether Trump will be willing to reimpose the tariffs even if his terms are not met. As a New York Times article put it, “[Chinese leader] Xi [Jinping] learned that his adversary has a pain point.” By backing down, Trump may also have revealed that he is less crazy than he would like adversaries to believe, which was also the fatal flaw of Nixon’s attempt to use the madman strategy to win the Vietnam War.In sum, while critics who claim the madman theory has zero utility are somewhat overstating the case, it does have crucial flaws that will severely undermine what Trump will likely be able to achieve in the realm of international trade. Moreover, the harsh economic costs of this strategy and its blatant inconsistency with long-held American values championed since World War II make it a clearly unwise course to pursue moving forward.

[Category: Economy, Donald trump, Tariffs]

— Can Trump-brokered Pakistan-India ceasefire hold?

 

at 5/10/25 9:42am

Saturday morning (U.S. time), President Trump and Rubio claimed credit for brokering a ceasefire between India and Pakistan following a week of dangerous cross border attacks.It was not clear by midday whether the ceasefire, if fully confirmed, would hold, though Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif thanked President Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the first acknowledgement of the deal by either side today. “Pakistan appreciates the United States for facilitating this outcome, which we have accepted in the interest of regional peace and stability,” Sharif said.As international encouragement for the ceasefire came in from Europe, cross border skirmishes were already being reported by the New York Times, indicating the tenuous nature of the situation. On April 22, terrorists attacked a group of Indian tourists near Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, killing 26 civilians. India blamed Pakistan-based militant groups with a history of cross-border attacks. Pakistan denied responsibility, pointing instead to local Kashmiri militants acting on their own. It was the deadliest civilian attack in India since the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Fears of retaliation surged as India suspended the Indus Water Treaty and both countries canceled each other’s visas. On May 7, India struck what it said were terrorist camps in Pakistan, launching missiles into Pakistan-administered Kashmir, killing 31 people according to Pakistani authorities. Drone strikes followed in both countries’ Punjab provinces. Pakistan claimed to have downed up to five Indian jets; U.S. officials claimed it was two. This was also viewed as a showcase of Chinese aircraft against French and Russian models. By Friday night, the conflict escalated dramatically. Drone strikes by both sides were taking place continuously and heavy artillery fire by both sides on the Line of Control in Kashmir was forcing major evacuations of civilians. India targeted military bases inside Pakistan’s Punjab, including Nur Khan airbase near Rawalpindi, close to the military’s headquarters, after alleged Pakistani missile strikes in the Indian state of Punjab. In response, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif convened Pakistan’s National Command Authority, signaling deliberations over its strategic–and possibly nuclear options. What followed is murky, but U.S. intervention appeared swift. Vice President J.D. Vance had initially downplayed the crisis as “none of our business,” but Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Pakistan’s army chief, urging de-escalation. The Saturday ceasefire news out of Washington is welcome but aside from Rubio and Trump taking credit, both India and Pakistan had plenty of reasons to avoid all out wa— for India especially it would have endangered its successful economic growth story. Their close regional partners also pushed for peace. Whether it was true mediation or simply backchannel encouragement remains unclear-but for now, the region has stepped back from the brink, saving many lives.

[Category: Qiosk, Trump, Rubio, India, Pakistan, India-pakistan]

— Trump envoy calls out neocons pushing for war with Iran

 

at 5/9/25 11:40am

President Trump’s foreign policy envoy on Thursday criticized those who are trying to undermine the president’s negotiations to place limits on Iran’s nuclear program, saying they have a “bias toward military action,” adding that he and Trump instead wanted to put diplomacy first in U.S. foreign relations. “In their minds, anything that is of a military nature to be a solution to that problem, they have a bias towards that. They give no consideration whatsoever on what the consequences are on that,” envoy Steven Witkoff said during an interview with Breitbart. “The neocon element believes that war is the only way to solve things.” Trump “believes in peace through strength, which essentially means that resorting to violence and war is not necessarily in the best interest of the country and not necessarily the best way to effect truces, ceasefires, permanent peace — whatever we want to call it,” Witkoff added. “Dialogue and diplomacy are an avenue he wants to pursue each and every time because if he can get to a successful resolution that’s in the best interest of the United States.” Witkoff’s comments come as more hawkish establishment conservatives are orchestrating a campaign to oppose the Trump administration’s diplomacy with Iran. But the White House and its allies are pushing back.More recently, Trump reportedly fired his national security adviser Mike Waltz because Waltz was pushing for war with Iran in internal conversations on the issue. And Trump allies outside the administration — like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and conservative media star Tucker Carlson — have been increasingly vocal in criticizing Iran hawks. Meanwhile, House and Senate Republicans this week started pushing their colleagues to call for only a full dismantlement of Iran’s program. Witkoff appeared to push back on that effort during his interview with Breitbart while stressing a diplomacy-first approach. “I believe in [Trump’s] policy of attempting to settle the Iranian conflict through dialogue. First of all, that’s a more permanent solution to that crisis than any other alternative,” he said. “If we get them [Iran] to voluntarily shift away from an enrichment program where they can enrich to not have centrifuges, to not have material that can be enriched to weapons-grade levels 90%. If we can get them to voluntarily do that, that is the most permanent way to make sure that they never get a weapon."

[Category: Qiosk, Trump administration, Witkoff, Diplomacy, Nuclear deal, Restraint, Iran]

— Diplomacy Watch: JD Vance says Russians are asking for too much

 

at 5/8/25 10:05pm

On Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance told Munich Leaders Meeting attendees that Russia was “asking for too much” in the peace negotiation process. Vance also clarified Washington’s strategy, saying that the United States sought a long-term settlement as the Russians continually rejected Ukraine’s offer for a 30-day ceasefire. “The Russians are asking for a certain set of requirements, a certain set of concessions in order to end the conflict. We think they’re asking for too much,” Vance said, adding that Moscow would have to make some concessions. Vance insisted that both Russia and Ukraine had to agree to terms to sit down and talk with each other, that it was “probably impossible” for Americans to properly mediate without the two sides doing so. “In particular, the step that we would like to make right now is we would like both the Russians and the Ukrainians to actually agree on some basic guidelines for sitting down and talking to one another,” Vance said. “Obviously, the United States is happy to participate in those conversations, but it’s very important for the Russians and the Ukrainians to start talking to one another. We think that is the next big step that we would like to take.” He added that the United States could walk away if Trump didn’t see a path forward. When asked about the vice president’s comments, President Trump responded, “It’s possible that’s right.” Adding, “we are getting to a point where some decisions are going to have to be made.” This sentiment mirrors some of the frustration reported from the White House. Trump, in a late-April social media post aimed at Putin, said the Russian president might be “tapping me along,” and that “maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war.” In the same post, Trump threatened Putin with secondary sanctions if Moscow continued to attack civilian infrastructure. Both sides have shown some interest in a peace settlement. In late April, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the Kremlin is “ready to reach a deal” with the United States after some fine-tuning. Additionally, the Ukrainian parliament approved the long-awaited rare-earth mineral deal with Washington yesterday. While the agreement did not include any explicit security guarantees for Ukraine, it is seen as necessary to strengthen ties between Kyiv and Washington and to show that Ukraine is a “constructive party,” as Ukrainian politician Inna Sovsun said. Other Ukraine War News This Week Hours after it began, Ukraine is accusing Russia of breaking a 3-day truce. Al Jazeera reports that on Thursday, Ukraine’s Air Force claimed that Russia sent guided bombs into the Sumy region of Ukraine. The attack reportedly caused three residential buildings to catch fire and killed one civilian. As Russia was preparing for its Victory Day parade, Ukraine struck deep into Russia, forcing all four airports in Moscow to close temporarily. According to The New York Times, the Russian Ministry of Defense shot down 105 drones across 11 regions in Russia, including areas just east of Moscow, hundreds of miles from Ukraine. The Ukrainian government reported no deaths or serious injuries. The Financial Times reported that Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian president Vladimir Putin met on Thursday to strengthen economic ties. In the Kremlin, the nations agreed to increase cooperation and friendship while signing an official statement implicitly critical of Washington. China is still officially neutral in the Russia-Ukraine war, but has agreed to increase trade with Russia as Moscow weathers American and European sanctions. From the May 5 State Department press briefing: Spokesperson Tammy Bruce said the United States would continue operating as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine for now and that “we’ve been its (Ukraine’s) largest supporter; we remain its largest supporter.” She qualified her statement: "we do recognize, and everyone has to, that both parties must come up with their proposals for an enduring peace, that we are looking for that progress.” She confirmed that President Trump was optimistic about a good outcome for all parties. Another reporter inquired about the announcement that Russia and China would strengthen ties and a supposed report that Chinese companies were making missiles in Russia. Bruce responded by simply saying that several countries were responsible “for helping move the carnage that is unfolding in Ukraine.” Finally, the spokesperson declined to comment on whether the United States supported “the principle of territorial integrity and not changing borders by force” concerning Russian holdings in Ukraine.

[Category: Qiosk, Diplomacy watch, Russia, Ukraine, Putin, China, Trump, Jd vance, Russia-ukraine]

— US invasion of Panama was first step toward the 'forever wars'

 

at 5/8/25 10:05pm

This is the first in a new Quincy Institute/Responsible Statecraft project series highlighting the writing and reporting of U.S. military veterans. Click here for more information.When the red tracers of an AC130 gunship’s minigun slashed through the warm, dry night skies above Panama City at 12:41 AM on December 20, 1989, few guessed that it would mark an opening stanza in America’s expansive unipolar moment. In the hours that followed, more than 20,000 U.S. troops conducted a swift and violent invasion of a sovereign state to remove the inconvenient and venal regime of General Manuel Antonio Noriega, who had embarrassed and bedeviled U.S. policymakers for years. Now nearly forgotten, this invasion — bequeathed with the trite and even cynical name of “Operation JUST CAUSE” — marked a tentative but crucial first step toward the “forever wars” of today. Freed from the frightening, but disciplining, constraints of the Cold War, American leaders were now unchecked by rival powers, and the very perception of success for Operation JUST CAUSE would help shape their decisions going forward. Conceived as the illegitimate child of America’s late 19th and early 20th century flirtation with regional imperialism and the naval theories of U.S. Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, Panama and its canal have long exerted significant pull over U.S. strategy and domestic politics. A more fulsome account of the U.S.-Panamanian relationship is beyond the scope of this essay, but the hypocrisy and bad faith on both sides in this tragicomic saga has few equals, even in the annals of U.S. hemispheric policy. The 1977 Panama Canal Treaty was ratified against fierce Republican opposition, and it provided for a 22-year turnover transition during which time there would be a hybrid administration of the Canal Zone. By 1989, this resulted in a dizzying checkerboard of U.S. and Panama Defense Force (PDF) military installations interspersed next to and co-located with each other across the isthmus. The U.S. reserved the treaty right to intervene militarily to protect the canal. The agreement, however, was predicated upon the assumption of good relations between the signatories, a dubious proposition even under the nationalist but pragmatic Panamanian regime of Omar Torrijos. When the cartoonishly duplicitous Manuel Noriega assumed de facto power in Panama after Torrijos’ death in 1981, he initially leveraged support for Reagan’s policies in Central America to mask his growing ties with drug cartels and other adversaries. This awkward fling ended, when Noriega’s 1987 indictment on federal drug charges ushered in a hostile turn in relations. Noriega quickly became a political detriment to the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. Anti-Noriega candidates decisively won elections in May 1989, only for regime militias to violently overturn the results. Performative U.S. sanctions caused considerable damage to the populace, but did little to dislodge Noriega, who also saw off two coup attempts in 1988 and 1989. During the latter attempt, with Noriega in the custody of the golpistas, American forces sealed two of the three routes leading to PDF Headquarters (“La Comandancia”) in Panama City, but failed to put in a third roadblock allowing loyalist forces to defeat the coup, rescue Noriega, and inflict a humiliating defeat on the Bush administration.As tensions skyrocketed, U.S. military preparations accelerated and evolved from a special forces “snatch” operation personally targeting Noriega into a massive strike designed to destroy the PDF and uproot the regime in its entirety. When PDF troops killed a U.S. Marine at a checkpoint in Panama City and detained and brutalized another U.S. family, Bush acted. Thousands of U.S. troops conducted a crushing and aggressive night attack, achieving complete surprise and effectively destroying the PDF by daybreak. After hiding for several days, Noriega was forced to flee, seeking refuge at the Papal Nunciature. Resistance quickly faded, and Noriega was extradited to the U.S. after several days of negotiations. The denied victors in the May election assumed the reins of power. In the following weeks, most U.S. troops returned home, although units in Panama battled a massive crime wave and rooted out pockets of Noriega supporters. Twenty-three U.S. troops were killed. Panamanian casualty estimates are mired in controversy, with SOUTHCOM estimating that 314 PDF troops had died, along 202 civilians, and leftist sources citing higher civilian tolls. For the U.S., JUST CAUSE was at the time a clear success. A quick, decisive, low-cost military operation had laid to rest a humiliating years-long array of diplomatic and policy failures. The invasion was an important proof of concept as one of the first skirmishes fought after passage of the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act which provided for new unified “Regional Commands.” It also marked a tactical inflection point: for over 200 years, U.S. ground forces had followed a distinctly “solar powered” pattern of operating in the day and digging in at night. In Panama, U.S. troops emerged as lethal and effective night fighters. The All-Volunteer Force — whose performance in the 1970s and early 80s had been shaky at best — finally seemed to deliver the capabilities that its early boosters had envisioned. Strategically, however, the invasion of Panama has not aged as well. In hindsight, it seems policymakers drew a series of suboptimal initial lessons from this venture, which were then amplified by the much larger 1991 Gulf War. First, U.S. leaders were seduced by the low casualties, domestic popularity, and quick success achieved first in Panama, and then repeated in DESERT STORM. These two operations enabled a strategic recalculation of the perceived costs and benefits of military action and elevated the relative attractiveness of military options. Even before the 9/11 attacks, the greater policymaker demand for “kinetic” solutions throughout the 1990s led to a dramatic spike in military activity. Second, the invasion of Panama was clearly a “false positive” for the efficacy of regime change operations. The quick and politically antiseptic removal of a hostile government, and the ease with which the U.S. installed a new one, incentivized policymakers toward maximalist demands, incrementally undermining the messy and emotionally unsatisfying drudgery of diplomacy. Bu the “Cliffs Notes” version of the operation that the policy community took on generally dismissed the unique advantages the U.S. military enjoyed in Panama, such the solid intelligence picture gleaned from an eighty-year presence, Noriega’s overwhelming unpopularity among Panamanians, and the existence of a legitimate alternate government. Finally, the rapid success of the invasion and the ease with which it lanced an ugly and embarrassing political boil for the United States (Noriega) encouraged policy planning that underestimated or even obviated the need to plan for messy post-conflict political engagement. This is not surprising: military success is clean and popular; diplomacy is hard and draining. We retroactively devalued having a viable, legitimate, indigenous political option in Panama. By contrast, when we went into Afghanistan and later Iraq, swift military success was followed by a policy vacuum and then by chaos and violence. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates once said that “success is a lousy teacher. It seduces people into thinking they can’t lose.” This was certainly the case for Operation JUST CAUSE. As we look back on decades of perpetual conflict and consider the path that brought us here, it is hard to look at the invasion of Panama as anything other than an early success that subsequently helped teach policymakers a slew of very dubious lessons. And as any pre-GPS traveler remembers, it is hard to recover from an early wrong turn, especially when the mistakes only become clear miles down the road.

[Category: Regime change, Enewsletter, Veterans project, Panama, Noriega, Operation just cause, George hw bush, Us military]

— When is a trillion not a trillion?

 

at 5/7/25 10:05pm

The Bunker appears originally at the Project on Government Oversight and is republished here with permission.When it comes from the Trump White HouseStop reading now if you don’t like math.There were plenty of headlines over the weekend about how President Donald Trump delivered on his pledge to try to boost U.S. defense spending to $1 trillion (PDF) in 2026. But — surprise! — he did it with smoky mirrors and sketchy math. In reality, Trump is seeking “only” $893 billion for the Pentagon next year. But, like a carnival huckster with a good SAT math score, the administration added $113 billion contained in a separate, one-time Republican congressional reconciliation bill. That pushes the total sought to, um, $1.01 trillion. Coincidence, or sideshow sales job? You decide!That bit of May 2 legislative legerdemain is why Republican anger over the trillion dollars topped muted Democratic opposition to the historically high budget proposal. The Trump administration “is not requesting a trillion-dollar budget,” griped Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS), who chairs the armed services committee. Senator Mitch McConnell, (R-KY), who chairs the appropriations committee’s defense subcommittee, agreed. Such “accounting gimmicks” will leave the U.S. military impoverished, he said, unable to counter “China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and radical terrorists.”Both senators accused Trump of the worst possible sin: coming up with a military budget not much different from Joe Biden’s. Given a supine Congress and the ridiculous caterwauling calls that the nation is starving its armed forces, the view from here is that lawmakers will approve Trump’s request. Then they’ll ladle on some extra lard for good measure. Trump’s top defense priorities include his Golden Dome missile shield (and no, that Madison Avenue moniker officially doesn’t refer to the presidential pate), nuclear weapons, and ship-building.Mind you, national security has been costing the country well north of a mind-blowing $1 trillion annually recently, assuming a full and complete accounting (something else that’s stealthy at the Pentagon, which has never passed an audit). For example, the Department of Veterans Affairs — which, for some strange reason, isn’t part of the U.S. military budget — now spends $350 billion a year.Three days before Trump’s announcement, the Government Accountability Office reported that the Pentagon itself acknowledged it found “confirmed fraud” totaled $10.8 billion between 2017 and 2024. “The full extent of fraud affecting DOD is not known,” the GAO said, “but is potentially significant.”But not to worry. When you’re spending a trillion dollars a year, no matter where it comes from, you don’t have to fret much about waste.Projected cost of U.S. nuclear forces skyrocketThe U.S. government plans to spend $946 billion through 2034 to buy and operate the nation’s nuclear weapons. That’s a 25% hike over 2023’s estimated cost for the decade ending in 2032, the Congressional Budget Office reported April 24. And that 2023 cost of $756 billion was $122 billion more (19%) than the 2021 projection. Let’s call it ICBMnflation.The latest estimate includes $357 billion to operate the nukes we’ve got, and $309 billion to buy new ones and the platforms — largely subs, bombers and missiles — to deliver them. That doesn’t include all of the stunning 81% cost growth associated with the troubled Sentinel ICBM program now under development (and it’s getting worse). CBO estimates the U.S. will also spend $79 billion improving command and control of its nuclear forces over the coming decade, and $72 billion for upgrades to its nuclear-weapon labs.CBO also is padding the cost estimates of the Pentagon and Department of Energy (which builds the nation’s nuclear weapons) by $129 billion. “That amount represents CBO’s estimate of additional costs that would be incurred over the 2025–2034 period if the costs for nuclear programs grew at roughly the same rates that costs for similar programs have grown in the past,” the CBO report said (taxpayers might ask why the Defense Department doesn’t do that on its own).This insane spending on weapons that no sane person wants fired is taking place as the U.S., China, and Russia are engaged in a stubborn showdown over the size and shape of their nuclear arsenals. “There’s no reason for us to be building brand-new nuclear weapons,” Trump said in February. “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.”Stop dilly-dallying and start doing, Mr. President, before it’s too late.The Army gets its latest marching ordersDefense Secretary Pete Hegseth lobbed a 4-page memo (PDF) into Army HQs April 30 designed to obliterate inefficiency and maximize killing. “To build a leaner, more lethal force, the Army must transform at an accelerated pace by divesting outdated, redundant, and inefficient programs,” he ordered, “as well as restructuring headquarters and acquisition systems.”Good luck with that, SECDEF!The Bunker’s all for a better, cheaper Army, but the memo is simply a wish list handed down from the E-ring. Like so much Pentagon-brass boilerplate, there’s no roadmap showing how to get it done. Hegseth’s mandate to fold Army Futures Command into the service’s Training and Doctrine Command isn’t sufficient, R. D. Hooker, Jr., a retired Army colonel now at Harvard, told Defense One. “This is probably a move in the right direction, but much more detail is needed to fully assess,” he said, adding: “Overhauling the entire acquisition process is the more fundamental need.”That’s for sure. After all, it was only seven years ago — during Trump’s first term — that Army Futures Command was created as the key to the Army’s, well, future. “Our Futures Command will have a singular focus: to make Soldiers and leaders more effective and more lethal today and in the future,” General John M. Murray, first head of Futures Command said as the new outfit stood up in 2018.Here's what has caught The Bunker's eye recently→ One purge here, one purge there…As the Trump administration continues to cashier and otherwise thin the ranks of its senior military officers, the Xi administration is doing the same in China, and risking their trust, Phillip C. Saunders and Joel Wuthnow of the Pentagon’s National Defense University wrote May 5 in the New York Times.→ Conflicting war stories…President George H.W. Bush said the U.S. had “kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all” after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But Casey Chalk argued in The Federalist April 30 that the nation actually continues to suffer from a Vietnam hangover 50 years after the war in Southeast Asia wrapped up.→ Finally, even more trillions!Global military spending hit $2.7 trillion in 2024, a 9.4% hike and the steepest since 1988, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said April 28, in its annual accounting on the financial costs of waging and readying for war.A trillion thanks for stopping by The Bunker this week. Consider forwarding this on to curious citizens so they can subscribe here.

[Category: Trump administration, Icbm, Nuclear weapons, Hegseth, Bunker, Pentagon budget]

— DOD clinging to empty properties for money is 'out of hand'

 

at 5/7/25 10:05pm

What’s worse than the Pentagon spending taxpayer dollars on golf courses? Spending taxpayer dollars on golf courses that nobody uses. Even as the Department of Defense renovates some of its 145 golf courses, the Army acknowledged in a new Pentagon study on excess capacity that it owns at least six facilities labeled “Golf Club House and Sales” that almost no one uses. The Navy owns at least two more golf facilities that it listed as underutilized.But the problem goes far beyond golf courses. The Pentagon oversees some $4.1 trillion in assets and 26.7 million acres of land — a sprawling network of military installations across the United States and the globe. Wasted space and resources in that network could be squeezing taxpayers out of billions of dollars. A Defense Department official familiar with the data included in the new report, which is only available for viewing in person at the House and Senate Armed Services Committees in Congress, explained to RS that the Pentagon’s problem of empty buildings has gotten out of hand. “Most installations are incentivized to hang onto empty or partially empty spaces until they know for sure that the building is totally failing,” they said. Otherwise, installations will lose their funding. In other words, the Pentagon has a phantom infrastructure problem made up of empty storage warehouses and training facilities that collect dust. The only thing real about them is the cost, brought to you by the U.S. taxpayer.But just how bad has this problem gotten? Well, the Pentagon itself doesn’t have a consistent answer, meaning the real number of underused facilities could be much higher. The last time the Pentagon tried to answer this question publicly was in a 2017 infrastructure capacity report, which found that roughly 20 percent of the Pentagon’s infrastructure was excess to need.However, this new report — responding to a requirement in the Fiscal Year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which the House and Senate Armed Services Committees just received this month — tells a different story. Taken together, these two reports reveal flawed and incongruous systems for assessing the Pentagon’s costly excess infrastructure capacity, which in turn serve to undermine the case for reducing this excess infrastructure through a new round of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC).In the new report, dated September 2024, each of the military service branches responded separately to a list of ten prompts included in the NDAA. One of these prompts seeks information on the total number of excess assets (i.e. buildings) and their total square footage. Another requests information on “the number of underused facilities with the associated use rate…”One of the more obvious shortcomings of this report is that the Army is the only military service that listed total assets and their square footage alongside excess assets and their square footage; the Navy and the Air Force simply listed excess assets and square footage, obscuring the percentage of their assets that are excess to need. By searching a General Services Administration (GSA) database of government property, we were able to correct for this shortcoming (though numbers represent our best estimate because GSA’s methodology for assessing total assets may differ from the Pentagon’s).The following table compares the 2024 report’s findings (and conclusions drawn from them based on GSA data) to findings in the 2017 report. Taken at face value, this data appears to show that the Pentagon’s excess infrastructure has shrunk significantly in the seven-and-a-half years since its last public report on infrastructure capacity. In particular, the Air Force may appear as if it has unlocked the secret to shedding excess capacity without the politically challenging work of a new BRAC process, having cut excess capacity from around 30 percent to less than 0.1 percent in under eight years. That news might come as a surprise to Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allen, who has been pointing to the Air Force’s roughly 30 percent excess infrastructure in a dispute with lawmakers over the Pentagon’s backlog of deferred maintenance at its facilities.Still, the new data would be welcome news, if it were sound. Unfortunately, methodological differences between the reports make it difficult to assess progress, and insight from a Pentagon official who worked on the 2024 report suggests the new numbers are severely underestimated.For one, Pentagon officials responsible for listing excess capacity in the report are incentivized to underreport, according to the Department of Defense official who was granted anonymity to discuss the report. “Facility utilization data included in the report varies widely in its accuracy and timeliness,” they said. “The information is self-reported, labor-intensive to compile, and installations have an incentive to avoid declaring facilities as ‘excess’ because once they change the facility status from ‘active’ to ‘excess,’ the projected sustainment funding associated with the square footage of the facility (or other unit of measure) will drop by 85%.”This not only makes access to accurate information exceedingly difficult, but it also creates a perverse incentive structure in which installations hang onto empty and partially empty spaces.“For instance,” the official explained, “if an installation is receiving $250,000 annually in sustainment funding for a warehouse — but the base no longer needs or uses the warehouse — the installation commander and their public works director will likely keep the warehouse listed as ‘active’ rather than changing its real property status as ‘excess’ to avoid slashing their sustainment funds down to a meager $37,500 per year. While it’s empty and locked or boarded up, they can spend almost nothing on it, but still use the $250,000 a year for the installation and use that money on other needed repair and sustainment projects across the base.”The new study acknowledges some issues with the data. For instance, the Army reported that it lacks “the manpower to do required utilization studies.” In other instances, military departments just blatantly ignored the data request, providing incomplete answers. But the study does not address the fundamentally perverse incentive for installations to underreport excess capacity.The 2017 report by contrast, paints a much starker picture regarding Pentagon waste. Rather than detailing individual installations, that study assessed excess capacity by service using a baseline year of 1989 to maintain consistency with earlier infrastructure capacity reports. However, the report itself still underscores that its findings are highly conservative, pointing to its assumption that there was not excess capacity in 1989. As the methodology section explains, “using 1989 as a baseline indicates the excess found in this report is likely conservative because significant excess existed in 1989, as evidenced by the subsequent BRAC closures.” The Pentagon has said that past BRAC rounds are collectively saving taxpayers some $12 billion per year. Congress should work to authorize a new round of BRAC, which could save taxpayers additional billions of dollars per year, without further delay. As a start, lawmakers should include a new reporting requirement in this year’s NDAA that requires the Pentagon to report on its excess infrastructure capacity on an annual or biennial basis and lays out clear parameters around methodology to ensure accuracy and consistency across reports. Failing that, lawmakers and taxpayers will continue to be kept in the dark as to the true scale of the Pentagon’s waste and the squandering of taxpayer dollars it entails.

[Category: Pentagon budget, Defense department]

— The India-Pakistan Clash: Welcome to the Post-Unipolar World

 

at 5/7/25 12:38pm

India responded to the April 22 terrorist attack on tourists in picturesque Kashmir valley by striking multiple sites in Pakistan on Tuesday. This has led to questions as to what Washington should do as these two countries clash. What are U.S. interests in this theater and how should it defend them? President Trump reacted to the news by saying “We knew something was going to happen…they’ve been fighting for a long time…many, many decades,” and expressing the hope that “it ends very quickly.” In earlier statements, Washington had strongly condemned the terrorist attack that triggered this cycle and also urged calm between the two Asian neighbors. The United States has a major interest in combating terrorism. Most of the vast militant complex operating in Pakistan traces its origins to the U.S. Cold War strategy of using fundamentalist proxies to counter the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The spillovers from that conflict have been deadly. Among these is the turbocharging of the India-Pakistan rivalry, a rivalry which is itself rooted in the colonial partition of India in 1947. But all that lies in the past. Fast forward to today and it is clear that the United States has only limited interests and constrained influence in the region. In terms of combating terrorism, there has long been strong and bipartisan cooperation between Washington and New Delhi, especially since the brutal terror attacks in Mumbai in November 2008 conducted by the Pakistani radical group Lashkar-e-Taiba. The Trump administration recently extradited Tahawwur Rana, a Pakistani-origin Canadian citizen, to India. Rana was convicted by a U.S. court for his role in the Mumbai attacks. Apart from ensuring that terrorists are duly brought to justice, the United States, along with the rest of the world, also has an interest in not seeing an all-out nuclear war break out anywhere. In South Asia, escalation to nuclear use is more likely from Pakistan. Unlike India, its nuclear doctrine does not include a No First Use commitment. Islamabad might be tempted to use its tactical nukes to fend off any major Indian conventional offensive that conquers significant parts of its territory. But we are very far from such a scenario in South Asia. The second India-Pakistan military clash in six years is just one symptom of our post-unipolar world. In such a world, many states, especially in the Global South, will have more agency. Some will exercise it forcefully in their perceived interests. The United States will often not be responsible for these dynamics. The flip side of this is that the United States will also be unable to “fix” the challenges of deep-rooted rivalries in distant lands. The Trump administration seems to instinctively realize this, at least in South Asia.

[Category: Enewsletter, India, Pakistan, Trump, Kashmir, Nuclear powers, Qiosk]

— Trump considering US-led Iraq-style occupation of Gaza

 

at 5/7/25 10:48am

The Trump administration is reportedly considering a plan for the U.S. to lead the administration of Gaza after Israel’s siege, similar to how Washington ran Iraq after the 2003 American-led invasion. Reuters reports that there have been “high level” discussions “centered around a transitional government headed by a U.S. official that would oversee Gaza until it had been demilitarized and stabilized, and a viable Palestinian administration had emerged.”:The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to discuss the talks publicly, compared the proposal to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq that Washington established in 2003, shortly after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.Most experts cite the CPA as the catalyst for an impending insurgency that mired the U.S. military in war in Iraq for more than a decade, from which hundreds of thousands were killed at a cost of upwards of $3 trillion. Like the U.S.-led war in Iraq, Reuters adds that “there would be no fixed timeline for how long such a U.S.-led administration [in Gaza] would last” while “[a] U.S.-led provisional authority in Gaza would draw Washington deeper into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and mark its biggest Middle East intervention since the Iraq invasion.”Quincy Institute research fellow Annelle Sheline called the idea “appalling and absurd,” adding, “Americans should remember the futility of imposing a government on Iraq at the barrel of a gun. The fact that Trump is apparently considering this demonstrates how captured he is by Israel, rather than prioritizing the interests of the United States."“If this is true, then it is a complete turn to the policies of the Bush administration in terms of occupying Middle Eastern land,” added the Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi. “It’s the opposite of what Trump promised the American people in terms of bringing troops home and disentangling the U.S. from the region.” Parsi continued: “It also shows that as long as Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories continues, which is the root cause of the violence, the U.S. will always face pressures to be pulled back into the Middle East.”Hardline neoconservative think tank Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, or JINSA, and the Vandenberg Coalition released a plan last year — with similar contours to what Reuters reported — that called for the creation of a private entity, the “International Trust for Gaza Relief and Reconstruction” to be led by “a group of Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates” and “supported by the United States and other nations.”

[Category: Israel, Israel-palestine, Palestine, Gaza, Qiosk, Gaza war]

— US Gaza pier op was more than a flop, it was a gigantic hazard

 

at 5/7/25 5:11am

When President Joe Biden announced that the United States military would be building a pier off the shore of Gaza to inject much needed aid to the Palestinians there, he attempted to marshal the old feelings undergirding the "indispensable nation" — we would use our might, know-how, and ability to crack into action to make things right.Turns out that our might and know-how was desperately lacking and, as time would tell (and skeptics at the time would have told you), making things "right" would have been using the leverage Washington had to tell the Israelis to open up the aid flood gates, not try to build a land bridge to get it in through the back door.A new Pentagon Inspector General report finds that the pier operation, which took place for several months in the spring of 2024, was a bigger failure than earlier reported. It was also a gigantic hazard. According to the Washington Post, which reported about this today, some 62 military personnel were injured (exact causes still unknown), and one Army soldier, Sgt. Quandarias Stanley, was killed in a forklift accident, dying from his injuries five months later. The operation cost U.S. taxpayers $320 million (yes, a fraction of the money spent on U.S. weapons to Israel during this time), but barely any assistance if any actually got to the Gazans at the heart of the mission. Meanwhile, according to the IG, more than two dozen U.S. watercraft and other equipment were damaged in a three month time period, causing $31 million in repairs. The operation, which engaged the Army's Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS, as written about in these pages, was supposed to deploy both a floating pier to receive international aid from Cyprus and an extended one connected to the shore. Once built, the one on the shore was shut down at least twice because of the waves and weather conditions. Workers on the shore came under mortar fire, presumably by militants. The food actually got to the beach but it rotted away in warehouses because the Israelis did not offer a workable pathway to get it through the security checkpoints to Gazans inside.The IG report takes aim at the military for missing the mark, according to the Post: The Army and Navy did not meet standards for equipment and unit readiness, the report said, “nor did they organize, train, and equip their forces to meet common joint standards.” Transportation Command, which oversees coordination of military assets, also fell short of standards in planning and exercises, the report found....Crucially, Army and Navy equipment — including watercraft, piers, causeways and communication systems — were not designed to work together, which led to damage in the Gaza operation. Planners also did not think through mission-specific needs, such as beach conditions and sea states, that should have informed how commanders executed the operation.The mission seemed ill-fated from the beginning as it was born out of the desperation of an administration that, falling short of using the power of the White House to force the Israelis to stop its collective punishment or face a cutoff of Washington's generous support, decided to stage a spectacle to divert the world's attention from its failures. We know now that Biden pushed the military to move forward despite warnings that logistically, it wouldn't work.It only made things worse, reflecting the impotence of the world's "superpower" and the emptiness of Biden's words and commitment to leadership. A year later, Gaza is facing outright destruction and its people are literally starving to death. The Gaza pier is but an IG report now, a footnote to American folly in this intractable conflict.

[Category: Us military, Enewsletter, Gaza pier, Israel, Israel-gaza, Biden administration, Qiosk, Gaza]

— ADL takes on shareholders questioning Israel arms sales

 

at 5/6/25 10:05pm

The Anti-Defamation League’s mission is to “stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment for all.” But over the past year that mission has stretched to include defending some of the world’s biggest weapons companies from shareholder proposals calling for reporting on the human rights impact of their weapons, according to a review of SEC filings, proving itself an important ally for weapons and tech firms seeking to profit from sales of weapons technologies to Israel and avoid accountability for the ways in which their products are used on Palestinians.The ADL’s battle with faith-based shareholder advocacy occurs alongside a majority of Americans now holding unfavorable views of Israel (an 11% increase since before the start of Israel’s war in Gaza), a time when efforts to hold weapons and tech companies accountable for their role in attacks on Palestinian civilians may find increasing support.Last October, Investor Advocates for Social Justice (IASJ) — a group representing “investors with faith-based values who seek to leverage their investments to advance human rights, climate justice, racial equity, and the common good” — filed a shareholder proposal on behalf of Sisters of St. Frances of Philadelphia, calling for Lockheed Martin to compile a report on “the alignment of its political activities (including direct and indirect lobbying and political and electioneering expenditures) with its Human Rights Policy.”“F-35s have been used repeatedly by Israeli forces to target Palestinian civilians in Gaza and are connected to apparent war crimes,” said the proposal. “Despite this, in June 2024, Israel signed a $3 billion deal with Lockheed to sell 25 F-35s to Israel.”And in another proposal, filed on behalf of Francsiscan Sisters of Allegany NY in November, IASJ called for a similar report from General Dynamics, citing the company’s supply “...of artillery munitions and bombs to Israel, which have been reportedly used in attacks on Palestinian civilians in Gaza, that may constitute war crimes, and, according to the International Court of Justice, may plausibly amount to genocide.”“Although, in June 2024, UN experts called on companies to immediately end arms transfers to Israel, even if approved by State export licensing, or risk complicity in violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, GD continues to sell weapons to Israel,” said the proposal.Last month, the ADL filed their own opposition to both proposals and issued a press release accusing the proposals of being motivated by antisemitism and claimed the proposals contain “...deeply misleading and inflammatory allegations, accusing General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin of complicity in war crimes—and, in the case of General Dynamics, even genocide—due to their lawful defense partnerships with Israel.”“These claims are false, defamatory, and part of a broader campaign aimed at delegitimizing Israel’s right to self-defense and existence,” said the ADL."We are confounded by suggestions that our shareholder proposals advance antisemitism,” IASJ told Responsible Statecraft. “IASJ condemns antisemitism, in all its forms, and recognizes that it poses a significant threat to the human rights of Jewish communities worldwide. As representatives of faith-based investors, we are committed to advancing the highest standard of human rights and the common good in our investors’ portfolio companies."For much of the Gaza War, the ADL has combated shareholder advocacy pushing for human rights accountability at weapons and technology companies.In November 2023, IASJ filed a shareholder proposal at RTX (formerly known as a Raytheon) calling on Raytheon’s board of directors to “...publish a report, at reasonable cost and omitting proprietary information, with the results of a Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA), examining Raytheon’s actual and potential human rights impacts associated with high-risk products and services, including those in conflict-affected areas and/or those violating international law.”“Raytheon’s products have been directly linked to human rights violations in Yemen,” said IASJ’s filing on behalf of School Sisters of Notre Dame Cooperative Investment Fund, a Catholic institutional investor. “The Company was most recently connected to 80 civilian deaths in a 2022 airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition, potentially amounting to war crimes. Raytheon also sells weapons to Israel, which are used to maintain the system of apartheid.”IASJ followed its Raytheon proposal with a similar shareholder proposal on behalf of American Baptist Home Mission Societies in December 2023, calling for Amazon to conduct “an independent third-party report, at reasonable cost and omitting proprietary information, assessing Amazon’s customer due diligence process to determine whether customers’ use of its products and services with surveillance, computer vision, or cloud storage capabilities contributes to human rights violations or violates international humanitarian law.”The group highlighted Amazon’s work with governments “with a history of rights-violating behavior,” including, “The Israeli government’s ‘Project Nimbus,’ protested by Amazon employees, uses AWS to support the apartheid system under which Palestinians are surveilled, unlawfully detained, and tortured.”The ADL urged shareholders to vote against both proposals, telling shareholders at both companies that, “The proposal and supporting statement include language that is false and misleading, could embolden antisemitism in society, and we believe seeks to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist.”“Labeling Israel as an apartheid state risks blurring the lines between criticism of Israeli policies and feeding into antisemitic assertions which demonize the Jewish state and the Jewish connection to Israel,” the ADL told shareholders. “Moreover, falsely singling out Israel with a term linked to severe injustice and discrimination could embolden hostility directed against Jews in the United States and beyond. According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), antisemitic incidents in the US have surged by 360 percent since October 7, 2023.”While the ADL took particular issue with the use of “apartheid,” using the term to characterize Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as apartheid is in line with assessments made by prominent human rights groups, including: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Israel’s primary human rights group, B’TSelem (Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter who all highlighted the discriminatory systems of laws and restrictions on movement imposed on Israeli settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank.The IASJ proposals at Amazon and Raytheon failed to win necessary support from shareholders and the ADL cheered its success, boasting of its shareholder advocacy that “focused on combating antisemitism & hate, supporting Israel, and addressing critical Tikkun Olam issues.”General Dynamics’ shareholders will vote on the IASJ proposal at its board meeting today, May 7, and Lockheed’s shareholders will vote on May 9th.The ADL did not respond to a request for comment.

[Category: Israel, Anti-defamation league, Antisemitism, Weapons industry, Gaza war]

— Report: Pentagon will likely fail audits through 2028

 

at 5/6/25 10:05pm

The Defense Department has not taken adequate measures to address “significant fraud exposure,” and its timeline for fixing “pervasive weaknesses in its finances” is not likely to be met, according to a recently released government report. The Government Accountability Office conducted the report to assist the Pentagon in meeting its timeline for a clean audit by 2028. DOD has failed every audit since it was legally required to submit to one each year beginning in 2018. In fact, the Pentagon is the only one of 24 federal agencies that has not been able to pass an unmodified financial audit since the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990. For more than two decades, the GAO has given over 100 recommendations on how the Pentagon can fix its financial weaknesses. Most cases are still open, with no progress satisfied other than a “leadership commitment.” Additionally, many of the thousands of identified deficiencies found in its 2018 audit remain outstanding. Indeed, the GAO found that “to achieve a department-wide clean audit opinion by December 2028, the DOD needs to accelerate the pace at which it addresses its long-standing issues.” GAO advises DOD to implement a fraud risk management system. From 2017 to 2024, the DOD reported $10.8 billion in confirmed fraud. While that number is small compared to the Pentagon’s budget over those years, “recoveries and confirmed fraud reflect only a small fraction of DOD’s potential fraud exposure,” the GAO says. Examples of more egregious cases of fraud and abuse at the Pentagon — like the $52,000 trash can or the $7,600 coffee maker — have been well-documented over the years. But others are a bit more granular. The new GAO report noted that the Pentagon purchased a machine gun bipod component with subpar manufacturing standards because a vendor fraudulently edited paperwork to reflect a higher manufacturing score. Luckily, engineers caught the deficiency before the bipods entered the battlefield, but the incident could have placed soldiers in harm’s way. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth promised to return a clean DOD audit by the end of Trump’s administration, an outcome the GAO report and experts say is unlikely, barring significant changes. Despite inadequate answers to these massive financial deficiencies, President Trump has ordered the Pentagon to increase its budget to over $1 trillion, up from the around $850 billion that the Biden administration requested for FY 2025. “Congress set an ambitious deadline for the Pentagon to achieve an unmodified audit opinion in 2028, but there's little evidence to suggest the department can meet it,” says Julia Gledhill, Research Associate at the Stimson Center. “Lawmakers would be better off lowering Pentagon spending, which would help the department mitigate the risk of contractor fraud. With more limited resources, the Pentagon would have to tackle the issue head-on."

[Category: Pentagon budget, Department of defense, Washington politics, Pentagon]

— Trump deal with the Houthis: Declare victory and go home?

 

at 5/6/25 2:26pm

Trump described the Houthis as having “capitulated,” saying, "We will stop the bombings. They have capitulated... we will take their word that they will not be blowing up ships anymore, and that's the purpose of what we were doing." Trump’s announcement generated speculation about whether the agreement included Houthi attacks on Israel — Israel was apparently unaware of the deal — as Trump’s statement appeared to pertain exclusively to Red Sea shipping.A Houthi missile struck near Ben Gurion airport on May 4, demonstrating that the group is capable of penetrating Israel's Iron Dome and THAAD missile defenses. In response, Israel and the U.S. pummeled Houthi positions as well as crucial infrastructure for Yemeni civilians, including Hodeidah port and Sanaa airport. The U.S. has bombed Yemen every night since March 15, following the decision to launch American attacks despite the lack of any imminent threat to U.S. positions, as acknowledged by administration officials in the Signalgate group chat imbroglio. It is unclear if the truce with the Houthis is intended to last. President Trump is scheduled to begin the first international trip of his second term on May 13, when he will travel to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar. The Gulf states are eager to avoid getting caught in a war between the U.S. and Iran. Tehran has communicated that if America’s Arab partners allow the U.S. to launch attacks from their soil, they will be considered targets for Iranian retaliation. Therefore, Trump’s announcement may be intended to calm tensions ahead of his meetings with Gulf leaders in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Doha. In this, the announcement may not be unlike his short-lived ceasefire, which Trump pressured Netanyahu to accept in time for his inauguration; Trump then did nothing to ensure that Israel upheld the deal. After initially allowing some aid into Gaza, Israel violated the agreement by blocking all food, water, fuel, and medicine from entering Gaza since March 2, and on March 18, Israel fully abandoned the ceasefire, resuming its daily bombing of the Gaza Strip. Unfortunately, Trump’s interest in calming tensions with the Houthis may only persist as long as he is in the region, trying to secure lucrative deals with his Saudi, Emirati, and Qatari partners. Yet there is a possibility that the truce with the Houthis could persist at least for the duration of the Trump administration’s negotiations with Tehran over Iran’s nuclear program. Trump’s interest in the talks was reiterated by his decision to fire his National Security Advisor Mike Waltz on May 5, who had colluded with Netanyahu to try to thwart the negotiations.The Houthi truce may also reflect Trump’s awareness of his base’s preferences. In a post on X on May 2, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene aired her frustration, saying “I campaigned for no more foreign wars.” She went on, “I don’t think we should be bombing foreign countries on behalf of other foreign countries especially when they have their own nuclear weapons and massive military strength,” making her one of the few Republican politicians willing to question America’s unconditional support for Israel.The preferences of Trump’s base align with those of his Gulf allies. In recent years, the previously bellicose Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has tried to avoid unnecessary conflict, whether with Tehran or Sanaa, in order to encourage tourism and foreign investment to support Vision 2030, his plan to reduce his kingdom’s reliance on fossil fuels. Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE agreed to a truce with the Houthis in April 2022 after the group had demonstrated that their missiles could hit their capital cities. U.S. bombardment of the Houthis has already cost more than $3 billion, plus seven MQ-9 Reaper drones, each worth millions of dollars, not to mention an embarrassing incident where a F/A-18E Super Hornet fighter jet – worth more than $60 million – fell off a U.S. aircraft carrier into the Red Sea.For their part, the Houthis maintained they could stop assaults on U.S. warships if American attacks end, but that attacks on Israel would continue until it stops its 18-month war on Gaza.“The Yemeni people remain committed to their pressure options against the [Israeli] entity until the aggression on Gaza stops and the blockade is lifted,” the statement said. “The Israeli and American aggression will not go unanswered and will not deter Yemen from continuing its supportive stance toward Gaza.”Although Trump may primarily wish for a pause in Houthi attacks as he seeks to reassure America’s wealthy allies in the Gulf, America’s interests would be best served by avoiding further escalation in the Red Sea. As security analyst Emma Ashford tweeted about the truce: “Declaring victory and going home is often not the worst strategic choice.”

[Category: Qiosk, Trump, Israel, Gulf states, Yemen, Houthis]

— Americans strongly support basics but are split on other foreign aid

 

at 5/6/25 4:08am

An overwhelming majority of voting-age Americans support providing humanitarian and food aid to developing countries, but they are more divided along partisan lines on other forms of U.S. assistance to nations of the Global South, according to new poll results released by the Pew Research Center.The findings come as the White House last week released a “skinny budget” that proposed a nearly 48% cut to total foreign aid, including a 40% reduction in humanitarian assistance, for next year and signaled its intent to rescind nearly half the current year’s aid budget appropriated by Congress but not yet spent. If successful, the administration’s plans would amount to a roughly 84% reduction in total U.S. foreign aid. It will now be up to the GOP-dominated Congress to decide whether and how much to approve the administration’s plans.The new poll found that large majorities of both Republicans and Democrats and independents support providing medical-related and basic human needs aid, such as food and clothing, to people in developing countries. But supporting economic development projects and pro-democracy initiatives garner far less support from Republicans or Republican-leaning Americans than their Democratic counterparts. Under the administration’s proposed budget, those programs would be largely eliminated.Remarkably, providing weapons and related assistance to foreign militaries receives even less approval from Republicans and Republican-leaning respondents, while a slight majority of their Democratic counterparts are more supportive. Democrats have historically been more skeptical of supporting foreign militaries since World War II than Republicans.The poll, which was carried out with the participation of 3,605 respondents during the last week of March, also found major partisan differences on the questions of how much the United should engage in problems overseas and to what extent it should take account of the interests of other countries in conducting international relations.Two thirds of Republican or Republican-leaning respondents agreed with the proposition that “we should pay less attention to problems overseas and concentrate on problems here at home,” as opposed to “it’s best for the future of our country to be active in world affairs.” Sixty-two percent of Democratic or Democratic-leaning respondents chose the latter statement as best representing their views.And more than four in Democratic or Democratic-leaning respondents (83%) said Washington should “take into account the interests of other countries, even if it means making compromises with them.” A small majority (52%) or Republicans opted for the alternative proposition: Washington should “follow its own interests even when other countries strongly disagree.”The survey was conducted after the administration of President Donald Trump and its Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, announced the virtual elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and its transfer to the Department of State. In early March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio followed up by canceling more than 80 percent of all USAID contracts after finding that they “did not serve (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States.” The administration also moved to eliminate or drastically cut back other aid programs previously administered by the State Department itself, as well as some Congressionally mandated and federally financed non-governmental organizations, such as the National Endowment for Democracy. Many of these actions have been challenged in court.Breaking down the numbersIn fiscal 2023, the last year for which statistics are fully available, U.S. foreign aid totaled $71.9 billion, or 1.2% of the total federal budget. That amount was more on average than the previous seven years, primarily due to the amount of monetary support provided to Ukraine ($16.6 billion), then in its second year of war with Russia. Of the total, military aid administered by the State Department – other U.S. military aid is channeled through the Pentagon — came to $8.2 billion, more than half of which was earmarked for Israel, Egypt, and Jordan.Of the remainder, most of which was administered by USAID, $15.6 billion went to disaster relief and other humanitarian aid; $12.1 billion went to the battle against HIV/AIDS and other diseases; $2.3 billion was devoted to democracy and rule-of-law promotion; and $2.9 billion to “multi-sector” programs.The latest poll results show strong support across both parties for medical and “basic needs” assistance. More than nine in ten Democrats or Democratic-leaning respondents (91%) said they supported providing medical assistance, a position shared by nearly either eight in ten Republican or Republican-leaning counterparts (77%). Taken together, 83% of respondents supported such assistance.Providing food and clothing registered similar levels of support – 89% among Democrats and Democratic-leaning respondents; 68% on the other side of the aisle. Combined, 78% of respondents said they support aid of this kind.Other forms of aid revealed much greater partisan differences. On the question of economic development aid, eight in ten Democratic and Democratic-leaning respondents voiced their support, while only 46% of Republicans and those leaning Republican agreed.Overall, 63% respondents favored providing development assistance. A similar breakdown applied to aid designed to “strengthen democracy.” In that case, 77% of the Democrat side said they supported it, while it had the support of only 45% of Republicans. Under the White House plan, however, those aid categories would be largely eliminated.On support and aid to foreign militaries, just over half of Democrats and Democratic-leaners (51%) favored such assistance despite their history, particularly beginning in the late- and post-Vietnam era of the 1970s, of promoting legislation to condition such aid on human rights and related considerations. Only three in ten of their Republican or Republican-leaning counterparts favored providing “support and weapons to militaries in other countries.” Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Republicans have generally been more skeptical of U.S. military aid to Kyiv than their colleagues across the aisle.The poll found the least support (34% overall) for what it called support for “art and cultural activities in other countries.” While a majority of Democrats and Democratic-leaning respondents (54%) said they support such initiatives, a mere 15% of Republicans agreed.The administration’s proposed 2026 budget would roughly cut in half total foreign-aid spending as a percentage of the total federal budget to nearly 0.6%. According to a poll of 1,160 adult respondents conducted by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation (PPC) in early February, solid majorities wanted to maintain or increase U.S. aid for humanitarian relief (56%), economic development (56%), global health (64%), education, the environment (65%), and democracy and human rights (60%) after being informed about those programs and assessing arguments both pro and con for each.While a majority of Republicans surveyed in that poll favored cutting some programs, less than half of those supported either cutting them “somewhat,” a small percentage (11-20%) favored eliminating them.“I would say the strongest message from the Pew survey – and the PPC survey – is that Americans of both parties are supportive of humanitarian aid and that there is no indication of a desire for a major reduction,” said Steven Kull, PPC’s long-time director who has polled American attitudes on foreign policy and related subjects for almost four decades. “Interestingly, this is the case even though Americans still grossly overestimate the amount of foreign aid the U.S. actually provides.”

[Category: Usaid, Aid, Trump administration, Pew poll, Democracy building, Foreign aid]

— Lobby Horse: Trump’s ‘trillion dollar' visit to Saudi Arabia

 

at 5/5/25 10:08pm

Next week President Trump will take his first international state trip as president and, just as in his first term, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will be his first stop. Trump hasn’t minced words about why he’s heading there: money. “I said I'll go if you pay $1 trillion to American companies — meaning the purchase over a four-year period of $1 trillion — and they've agreed to do that,” Trump told reporters on March 7, when he first announced that he’d visit the Kingdom. No Saudi official has confirmed that any such agreement was made, and there’s reason to be skeptical of the amount given Trump’s penchant for exaggeration and the fact that $1 trillion is more than the value of the entire Saudi sovereign wealth fund. While it’s unclear how much money is actually at stake and who will get it, there’s one person that is certain to cash in on Saudi Arabia’s financial largesse: Donald Trump. For years up until the present day, in fact, billions of dollars in Saudi money have been quietly flowing to companies owned by the president, his family, and others in Trump’s orbit. And, U.S. national security might be paying the price. Saudi Arabia’s courtship of Trump began before he even took office in 2017. At a 2015 rally in his run for president, Trump explained that, “Saudi Arabia — and I get along great with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.” After Trump was elected in 2016, his son-in-law Jared Kushner quickly formed a bromance with Mohammed bin-Salman (MBS), then-Saudi Minister of Defense. That bond would ultimately prove extraordinarily profitable for Kushner and politically advantageous for MBS. Kushner was allegedly responsible for convincing Trump to make Saudi Arabia the destination of his first foreign trip abroad as president, where Trump was lavished with all manner of luxury, including “a multimillion-dollar gala in his honor, complete with a throne-like seat for the president,” according to the Washington Post. The Saudis also gave Trump the opportunity to pose as an international deal-maker, agreeing to hundreds of billions of dollars in investments in U.S. companies, including a wildly exaggerated $110 billion arms sale. A month after Trump’s visit, MBS orchestrated a palace coup — including detaining and torturing political rivals — that yielded him the title of Crown Prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia. When Trump heard the news, he reportedly told Kushner that, “we’ve put our man on top.” Even after MBS received international condemnation for ordering the brutal murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Turkey, Trump stood right by MBS’s side. “I saved his ass,” Trump told investigative reporter Bob Woodward, adding, “I was able to get Congress to leave him alone. I was able to get them to stop.”In the more than six years since Khashoggi’s murder, the Saudis have showered Trump and his family's businesses with cash. Kushner’s private equity firm Affinity Partners, received a staggering $2 billion from the Saudi’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which is ultimately controlled by MBS, just six months after Trump left office in 2021. Analysts at the sovereign wealth fund questioned numerous aspects of the investment, including, “the inexperience of the Affinity Fund management,” and the firm’s operations being, “unsatisfactory in all aspects,” according to the the New York Times. MBS, nonetheless, approved the deal days later. Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s Liberty Strategic Capital, also received a $1 billion investment from the Saudi’s PIF. With Trump’s reelection, Saudi money has once again begun pouring into Trump-world. In December, less than a month after Trump won the 2024 presidential election, the Trump organization announced it was leasing its brand to two new projects in Saudi Arabia. In early April, the Saudi PIF-owned LIV Golf Tour — that has attempted something of a hostile takeover of the American owned PGA Tour — held a tournament with a $25 million prize pool at Trump’s National Doral Golf Club that Trump himself attended. This is despite a two year investigation of PIF by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Minority Staff Report finding that PIF is spearheading a sportswashing effort by Saudi Arabia and that LIV and “the PIF’s investment in the PGA Tour does not make business sense unless it is an effort to buy long-term influence.” Just last week, the Trump Organization announced a deal to build “Trump International Golf Club Simaisma [Qatar],” in collaboration with a private Saudi company, Dar Global, that has close ties to the Saudi regime. The project includes “a luxury 18-hole golf course, golf club and an exclusive collection of Trump-branded luxury villas,” according to the press release. Dar Global is also working with the Trump Organization to build a Trump tower in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Also last week, at a conference in the UAE, a founder of the Trump family crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, announced that the firm’s digital coin would be used by the Emirati government backed firm MGX to invest $2 billion in the crypto exchange Binance. In 2023 Binance and its CEO pled guilty to accusations that the platform was used for sanctions violations and money laundering.Trump has announced that he will visit both the UAE and Qatar after visiting Saudi Arabia, where is expected to announce a $100 billion arms sales package to the Kingdom while also urging Congress to limit oversight on such sales. This is despite the Saudi regime having repeatedly used U.S. weapons in attacks that have killed civilians, even bombing weddings and school buses. Heinous attacks like these with U.S. weapons contribute to a phenomenon my colleague Bill Hartung has noted: U.S. weapons sales typically do more to fuel conflict than stability. In sum, Trump’s first state trip abroad during his second term will also be a tour of his glaring conflicts of interest. But U.S. taxpayers will be left footing the bill, both financially and in their security.

[Category: Lobby horse, Gulf states, Trump administration, Trump family, Mbs, Saudi arabia, Qiosk, Saudi arabia]

— A nationalist bucks pro-EU status quo, wins big in Romania

 

at 5/5/25 10:05pm

The head of Romania’s “sovereigntist” camp, George Simion won Romania’s first round presidential race on Sunday with 41% of the vote in a field of 11 candidates. Simion leads the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) party, the leading opposition force in parliament. Simion — who as president would have substantial powers in the realm of foreign and security policy — supports Romania’s NATO commitments, but is not an enthusiastic supporter of sending further military aid to Ukraine. His victory could strengthen the dissident camp on this issue within the EU. This first round result seems to be a decisive rebuke by the electorate of the cancellation of the first-round contest of last November, after the surprise first-place finish of Calin Georgescu, another nationalist-populist candidate. Georgescu, an AUR member until 2022, endorsed Simion, and the two men appeared together throughout the campaign. Simion seems to have succeeded in winning support from those angered by Georgescu’s disqualification. (The combined tally of votes in November for Georgescu and Simion, who finished fourth, was 37%). Georgescu was barred from running, because his November campaign allegedly benefited from covert financing from Russia, including effective TikTok advertisements. Simeon’s AUR was founded in 2019 initially advocating linguistic and cultural rights of ethnic Romanians in Moldova and Ukraine, but has broadened its appeal by espousing nationalist-populism and criticism of the EU. Ukraine barred him from entering the country on grounds that he was fomenting discontent within the ethnic Romanian minority (numbering about 150,000) in Ukraine. In the runoff to be held on May 18, Simeon will face popular Bucharest mayor Nicosur Dan, a pro-EU anti-corruption campaigner who received just under 21% of the first round vote, slightly ahead of the pro-establishment standard-bearer Crin Antonescu. Dan founded the liberal reformist Union for the Salvation of Romania (USR) party which is represented in parliament, but he ran as an independent. The May election rerun was conducted under stricter controls of campaign financing and monitoring of social media for inauthentic posts. Echoing some of Simion’s campaign rhetoric, Social Democrat Victor Ponta also ran a “Romania First” campaign, winning 13% of the vote. Those voters could give Simion an easy path to victory in the runoff. Simion’s AUR party is in the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) bloc in the European parliament, with the party of Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni and the Polish Law and Justice Party. Simion has called Meloni his political hero.Romania’s mainstream center right National Liberals and center left Social Democrats govern together in coalition, and are held responsible by much of the electorate for steady population decline, emigration of much of the workforce, lackluster economic performance, and corruption. Simion won 60% of the Romanian diaspora vote. Many rural and traditionalist voters are clearly disaffected and keen to see dramatic change. Sovereigntists vs EurophilesThe self-described sovereigntist Simion clearly aligned himself with the Trump administration, alleging that Romanian independence and dignity needed to be reasserted. Simeon clearly sought to emulate the model of Trump — and perhaps also Meloni — in his appeal to voters. Nationalist-populist parties in Italy, France and Poland celebrated Simion’s victory.On May 2, Simion posted on X that the election was not about any one candidate but was instead about “every Romanian who has been lied to, ignored, humiliated, and still has strength to believe and defend our identity and rights.” Dan has made fighting official corruption the centerpiece of his political career. His success represents a liberal rebuke of the political establishment and in particular the ruling coalition of the center right and center left (National Liberals and Socialists). NATO and UkraineSimion is somewhat more sympathetic toward Ukraine than Georgescu, although unlikely to favor providing further financial or military support. Romania is important to sustaining the economy and war effort in Ukraine. A large share of Ukrainian wheat exports is shipped from Romanian ports, and NATO conducts operations from bases in Romania.Simion favors following Trump’s lead on Ukraine and not that of those Europeans who vow to support Ukraine’s war effort even as the U.S. reduces or potentially halts its support. For better or worse, Simion has staked his campaign on the popularity of Trump’s administration. He sees continued U.S. support for NATO as essential to the defense of Europe, but recently expressed doubt that Russia poses a threat to Romania or NATO.Prospects for May 18 runoffSimion’s performance suggests that the populist right anti-establishment movement has a strong base of domestic support, as do similar parties across Europe, and is not an artifact of foreign meddling. The EU’s leadership likely dreads a Simion victory, which could reinforce the dissident stance of Hungary and Slovakia on the Ukraine war and the resolute stance against Russia. Simion will no doubt play up his affiliation with the slightly more acceptable faces of European populism, such as Meloni and former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.After the cancellation of last November’s election, the EU gave Romania its long-sought membership in the Schengen group, facilitating free movement within the EU. Rather than foregrounding attitudes toward Russia, the election contest in its first and second rounds pits Trump’s America against the European Union, sovereigntists vs. Europhiles. Simion goes into the runoff with a strong advantage, especially as Dan, a critic of the status quo, may not get wholehearted support from the mainstream parties. Although inspired by a wave of structural popular discontent, Simion’s continued success depends to some extent on the attractiveness of the U.S. under President Trump to Romania’s nationalist minded voters.

[Category: George simion, Calin georgescu, Eu, Romanian election, Romania]

— Israel to use US military contractors in new Gaza aid scheme

 

at 5/5/25 1:56pm

As Israel moves to expand military operations in Gaza, even approving plans to capture the entire strip, it also wants to seize control of humanitarian aid distribution there — with the help of private U.S. military contractors. As reported by the Washington Post, the contractors will be supplied by UG Solutions and Safe Reach Solutions — the same American contractors previously involved in checkpoint and security maintenance in the Gaza Strip during the since-broken ceasefire, as Axios reported back in January. Israel’s push for control of aid distribution in the Gaza Strip is a condition for lifting its more than two-month blockade, leading Gaza toward famine. According to its proposal, Israeli soldiers would guard the periphery of the aid distribution hub, where about 60 trucks of food would be allowed into the strip per day — a mere tenth of the volume permitted during the ceasefire. Under the plan, the American military contractors would handle the aid distribution from there. All existing soup kitchens and distribution centers would be shuttered. In general, having outside private military contractors in a war zone comes with a host of legal ambiguities. The rules governing their conduct — and the legal framework protecting them — are often poorly defined. That these American contractors would apparently report to Israel, a foreign government, in a territory it reportedly plans to capture and occupy no less, only further muddies the waters. “Private military contractors continue to push the legal boundaries of using civilians in combat zones. The ambiguity of which jurisdiction cover these contractors — Israeli, Palestinian, U.S. — is being hidden by who is paying the contract,” former Blackwater contractor Morgan Lerette, the author of Guns, Girls, and Greed: I Was a Blackwater Mercenary in Iraq, told Responsible Statecraft. “Aside from the danger, putting armed U.S. civilians in an active battlefield to feed locals, is reminiscent of Somalia in 1993. We can only hope it doesn’t end in a similar fashion,” Lerette explained, referencing the infamous “Black Hawk Down” battle where clashes between U.S. and Somali forces in a densely populated Mogadishu neighborhood lead to heavy civilian casualties. Speaking anonymously, a former U.S. official told NPR that Israel attempted to roll-out a similar aid plan in Gaza during the last administration. They alleged that the Biden administration, understanding the Israeli plan as manipulating humanitarian aid for military purposes, rejected it as a breach of international law. The United Nations and some aid partners involved in Gaza rejected the latest Israeli aid plan in a joint statement yesterday, alleging it “contravenes fundamental humanitarian principles and appears designed to reinforce control over life-sustaining items as a pressure tactic — as part of a military strategy.” "We will not participate in any scheme that does not adhere to the global humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, independence and neutrality,” the statement read. For its part, Israel is moving full speed ahead toward complete domination of the Gaza Strip, where Israeli officials hope Palestinians will feel compelled to leave. At the time of writing, at least 62,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since October 7. "We are conquering Gaza to stay — no more in-and-out. This is a war for victory, and it's time to stop being afraid of the word 'occupation.' We are defeating Hamas — we will not surrender, they will surrender,” Israel Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said of Israel’s current Gaza operations. UG Solutions and Safe Reach Solutions did not answer RS’ requests for comment in time for publication.

[Category: Qiosk, Palestine, Israel, Contractors, Militarism, Us, Israel-gaza, Enewsletter]

— Tech bros go to Washington: Coders want in on the kill chain

 

at 5/4/25 10:05pm

Silicon Valley’s elite traded hoodies for Hill passes last week and planted their flag in Washington. During a nearly 12-hour marathon Hill and Valley Forum in the Capitol Building, star-studded venture capitalists, defense technologists, and allied policymakers congratulated themselves on the promising start to the military application of artificial intelligence and autonomous weapons in the era of Trump 2. Jacob Helberg, co-founder of the annual forum and Trump’s pick for under secretary of state for economic growth, energy, and the environment, laid out the success story of Silicon Valley’s David-to-Goliath arc in his opening remarks. “We have the best leader in the world. President Trump is objectively and truly a sample of one…The stars have aligned. We have the builders, we have the innovators, the policymakers and leaders for a reindustrialization revolution in this country to seize this American moment,” he declared. Helberg forgot to credit one important group: the lobbyists. During coffee breaks outside the auditorium — where old friends caught up and West Coasters complained about the early start time — attendees explained that lobbyist insiders have been crucial in closing the daylight between would-be skeptics in government and Silicon Valley’s startups. “It’s no mistake that there’s been an infusion of Silicon Valley acolytes in Washington DC the last 6 months,” said one founder of a venture capital firm invested in defense technology companies. “Silicon Valley is recognizing that lobbying is a key conduit to get things done and sell its message to three letter agencies.” Venture capitalists are only now beginning to hire lobbyists. Since Trump’s victory in November, Andreessen Horowitz has snapped up contracts with BGR Government Affairs, Cornerstone Government Affairs, and Trump-connected Miller Strategies to advocate on “issues related to AI,” among other items. Other major venture capital firms, such as General Catalyst and Sequoia Capital, registered lobbyists for the first time just last year. Meanwhile, major defense technology firms such Palantir, Anduril, and Shield AI have doubled down on lobbying efforts in recent years. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}))}(); Another founder of a defense technology firm told RS that by lobbying up, Silicon Valley is following in the footsteps of the “game” played by prime contractors like Lockheed Martin and Boeing. “It’s all marketing. It’s about creating a message that sells well,” they said. And that message is resonating. Trump has signed a series of executive orders that favor some of Silicon Valley’s longtime stated goals, such as ordering the Pentagon to find commercial solutions rather than custom ones, emphasizing speed over testing, and slashing acquisition regulations. Trump also ordered the creation of a “Golden Dome” missile defense system, with three defense technology heavy hitters — Palantir, Anduril, and Spacex — reportedly eager to cash in. If the forum was any indication, Silicon Valley is also getting buy-in from Congress. Key lawmakers such as House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La) and Senate Armed Services Committee members Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), and Jim Banks (R-Ind.), all made appearances and sung the firms’ praises. “What you’re doing here is so critically important…you always have a welcome mat here at the Capitol. I hope you come by the Speaker’s office when you come individually or with your family, we’ll roll out the red carpet for you,” said Johnson. Aided by K street’s most high-powered firms, such as Invariant, Cornerstone Government Affairs, Akin Gump, and Brownstein Hyatt, Palantir’s rise in particular has been nothing short of meteoric. An investigation by the Tech Transparency Project found that Palantir has “hired a slew of well-connected players from Congress and federal agencies, ramped up lobbying activity, and created a foundation to bankroll policy-shaping research, conferences, and public commentary,” all of which is taking place mostly below the radar. One of the bills that Palantir’s lobbyists worked to pass was the $14 billion aid package to Israel. It’s not hard to see why; last year, the military software company agreed to a strategic partnership with Israel to supply “advanced technology in support of war-related missions,” and even organized its annual board meeting in Tel Aviv. Palantir’s full-throated support of Israel has not been without controversy. Palantir CEO Alex Karp was among one of the speakers at the Hill and Valley Forum, but his panel was quickly interrupted by two protestors. “Your AI technology for Palantir kills Palestinians.” shouted the first protestor from the Capitol Auditorium balcony. “Mostly terrorists, that’s true,” Karp replied. “You say mostly, so it’s okay to kill other innocent civilians?” The protestor quipped back, before security escorted her out. Karp ended his remarks by noting that Silicon Valley firms are no longer the underdogs they used to be. “You're still shooting uphill, but shooting uphill and shooting to Mount Everest while they're dropping grenades on you is a different story,” he said. As of this writing, the military software company currently has a market capitalization equal to Lockheed Martin and RTX combined. Firms like Palantir and Anduril still have some way to go in competing for top defense contracts, but, backed by an army of K street lobbyists, they might find more and more offices rolling out the red carpet. Grenades will certainly continue to drop — but Palantir and Co. want to be the ones throwing them.

[Category: Pentagon budget, Silicon valley, Technology, Artificial intelligence, Enewsletter]

As of 5/12/25 9:50am. Last new 5/12/25 4:10am.