Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.”

– Robert Lynd

"Competition is the law of the jungle, but cooperation is the law of civilization."

– Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921)

“If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution, but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country, intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves”

– George Orwell

1. Pentagon Set Up Briefing for Musk on Potential War With China

2. Musk Set to Receive Top-Secret Briefing on U.S. War Plans for China

3. The Warship That Shows Why the U.S. Navy Is Falling Behind China

4. 'The US as seen by Trump only relies on force. They don't care about their soft power'

5. Why Many Americans Are On Board With Federal Worker Firings

6. EU presses on with steel 'porcupine strategy' for Ukraine as Russia tries to end Western support

7. Nuclear experts pour cold water on US idea to restore and run Ukrainian power plant

8. The Most Influential Trump Adviser You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

9. Military was instructed to search keywords including ‘first’ and ‘history’ during rushed purge of Pentagon websites

10. The Iran Breakdown – New Iran Podcast on FDD

11. Military was instructed to search keywords including ‘first’ and ‘history’ during rushed purge of Pentagon websites

12. Hegseth says he’ll meet with Musk at Pentagon to discuss ‘efficiencies’

13. Pentagon spokesman sidelined after uproar over Jackie Robinson article

14. Who is Ronald Johnson, Trump's pick for Mexican ambassador?

15. Is Russia behind Heathrow Airport closure?

16. WTF is Wrong with Russia?

17. Law experts raise alarms over police action in DOGE Institute of Peace dispute

18. Pentagon cuts $580 million including grants for emissions, diversity, AI programs

19. Non-Military Foreign Assistance is Now DoD’s Problem

20. Semper Paratus and Special Forces: Why the Coast Guard Should be Part of the SOCOM Enterprise

21. How to Make Putin Laugh….Keep Trump Waiting

22. Timeless Lessons from Cannae to D-Day: Operational Art on the Sensor-Rich Battlefield of the Twenty-First Century

23. How the Trump Administration Can Limit China’s Arms Exports

24. The Chinese Communist Party’s Grey Zone Paradigm

25. Drones are Changing the Face of War

26. Conquest Is Back – A Peace Deal in Ukraine Could Further Normalize What Was Once Taboo

27. For European envoys in DC, a new chill from Trump’s Pentagon

28. China Top Priority in Trump NATSEC Strategy, Says Panel

29. Top Trump official tasked with dismantling USAID is out

30. Want to End the Ukraine Conflict? Look at Finland's ‘Winter War’

1. Pentagon Set Up Briefing for Musk on Potential War With China

Hmmm...

So this was posted on X/Twtter in reposnse to the NY Times article below. I never thought I would see the day when DOD would make such an unprofessional and childish comment. But is this a real DOD account?

DOD Rapid Response

@DODResponse

8h

The NYT is a propaganda machine that desperately needs to clickbait people into reading their FAKE news articles.

Elon Musk and @DOGE are doing great work to help the DOD!

So the above tweet made me wonder about "DOD Rapid Response." I could find nothing on the offical DOD web site. However under the official DOD X/Twitter account it is listed as an "affiliate" with more than a dozen DOD accounts.

This is what AI has to say about @DODResponse:

The account @DODResponse on X (formerly Twitter) is described as the official "Rapid Response" account for the Department of Defense (DoD). It is tasked with supporting the mission of the Secretary of Defense and fighting against what it terms "fake news"5. However, there is some controversy and skepticism about the account's legitimacy and purpose, with concerns raised about its potential misuse and the DoD's role in engaging with media narratives4 5.

While the account is presented as official, there are mixed reactions from the public, with some questioning its professionalism and the DoD's involvement in media disputes4. The account's activities align with broader trends of government entities using social media to address perceived misinformation, but it also raises questions about the appropriate role of military departments in such efforts.

To confirm its official status, you might look for verification from the DoD's official communications channels or other trusted government sources.

Intersestingly I did notice that the New York Times edited the headline of the article after the above tweet. The original headline was "Musk Set to Get Access to Top Secret US Plan for Potential War with China." (Which is similar to what is current on the Wall Steet Journal Web Site).

Pentagon Set Up Briefing for Musk on Potential War With China

The access would be a major expansion of Elon Musk’s government role and highlight his conflicts of interest.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/us/politics/musk-pentagon-briefing-china-war-plan.html

President Trump with Elon Musk and Mr. Musk’s son X, at the White House this month. It is unclear what the reasoning is for providing Mr. Musk such a sensitive briefing.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

By Eric Schmitt Eric Lipton Julian E. Barnes Ryan Mac and Maggie Haberman

March 20, 2025

阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版

The Pentagon was scheduled on Friday to brief Elon Musk on the U.S. military’s plan for any war that might break out with China, two U.S. officials said on Thursday.

Another official said the briefing would be China focused, without providing additional details. A fourth official confirmed Mr. Musk was to be at the Pentagon on Friday, but offered no details.

Hours after news of the planned meeting was published by The New York Times, Pentagon officials and President Trump denied that the session would be about military plans involving China. “China will not even be mentioned or discussed,” Mr. Trump said in a late-night social media post.

It was not clear if the briefing for Mr. Musk would go ahead as originally planned. But providing Mr. Musk access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded military secrets would be a dramatic expansion of his already extensive role as an adviser to Mr. Trump and leader of his effort to slash spending and purge the government of people and policies they oppose.

It would also bring into sharp relief the questions about Mr. Musk’s conflicts of interest as he ranges widely across the federal bureaucracy while continuing to run businesses that are major government contractors. In this case, Mr. Musk, the billionaire chief executive of both SpaceX and Tesla, is a leading supplier to the Pentagon and has extensive financial interests in China.

Pentagon war plans, known in military jargon as O-plans or operational plans, are among the military’s most closely guarded secrets. If a foreign country were to learn how the United States planned to fight a war against them, it could reinforce its defenses and address its weaknesses, making the plans far less likely to succeed.

The top-secret briefing that exists for the China war plan has about 20 to 30 slides that lay out how the United States would fight such a conflict. It covers the plan beginning with the indications and warning of a threat from China to various options on what Chinese targets to hit, over what time period, that would be presented to Mr. Trump for decisions, according to officials with knowledge of the plan.

A White House spokesman did not respond to an email seeking comment about the purpose of the visit, how it came about, whether Mr. Trump was aware of it, and whether the visit raises questions of conflicts of interest. The White House has not said whether Mr. Trump signed a conflicts of interest waiver for Mr. Musk.

The chief Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell, initially did not respond to a similar email seeking comment about why Mr. Musk was to receive a briefing on the China war plan. Soon after The Times published this article on Thursday evening, Mr. Parnell gave a short statement: “The Defense Department is excited to welcome Elon Musk to the Pentagon on Friday. He was invited by Secretary Hegseth and is just visiting.”

About an hour later, Mr. Parnell posted a message on his X account: “This is 100% Fake News. Just brazenly & maliciously wrong. Elon Musk is a patriot. We are proud to have him at the Pentagon.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also commented on X late on Thursday, saying: “This is NOT a meeting about ‘top secret China war plans.’ It’s an informal meeting about innovation, efficiencies & smarter production. Gonna be great!”

Roughly 30 minutes after that social media post, The Wall Street Journal confirmed that Mr. Musk had been scheduled to be briefed on the war planning for China.

Whatever the meeting will now be about, the planning reflected the extraordinary dual role played by Mr. Musk, who is both the world’s wealthiest man and has been given broad authority by Mr. Trump.

Mr. Musk has a security clearance, and Mr. Hegseth can determine who has a need to know about the plan.

Image

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has already received part of the China war plan and is expected to present the information to Mr. Musk alongside top U.S. government and military officials.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Mr. Hegseth; Adm. Christopher W. Grady, the acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Adm. Samuel J. Paparo, the head of the military’s Indo-Pacific Command, were set to present Mr. Musk with details on the U.S. plan to counter China in the event of military conflict between the two countries, the officials said.

The meeting had been set to be held not in Mr. Hegseth’s office — where an informal discussion about innovation would most likely take place — but in the Tank, a secure conference room in the Pentagon, typically used for high-level meetings of members of the Joint Chiefs, their senior staff and visiting combatant commanders.

Operational plans for major contingencies, like a war with China, are extremely difficult for people without extensive military planning experience to understand. The technical nature is why presidents are typically presented with the broad contours of a plan, rather than the actual details of documents. How many details Mr. Musk had wanted or expected to hear was unclear.

Mr. Hegseth received part of the China war plan briefing last week and another part on Wednesday, according to officials familiar with the plan.

It was unclear what the impetus was for providing Mr. Musk such a sensitive briefing. He is not in the military chain of command, nor is he an official adviser to Mr. Trump on military matters involving China.

But there is a possible reason Mr. Musk might have needed to know aspects of the war plan. If Mr. Musk and his team of cost cutters from the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, want to trim the Pentagon budget in a responsible way, they may need to know what weapons systems the Pentagon plans to use in a fight with China.

Take aircraft carriers, for example. Cutting back on future aircraft carriers would save billions of dollars, money that could be spent on drones or other weaponry. But if the U.S. war strategy relies on using aircraft carriers in innovative ways that would surprise China, mothballing existing ships or stopping production on future ships could cripple that plan.

Planning for a war with China has dominated Pentagon thinking for decades, well before a possible confrontation with Beijing became more conventional wisdom on Capitol Hill. The United States has built its Air Forces, Navy and Space Forces — and even more recently its Marines and Army forces — with a possible fight against China in mind.

Critics have said the military has invested too much in big expensive systems like fighter jets or aircraft carriers and too little in midrange drones and coastal defenses. But for Mr. Musk to evaluate how to reorient Pentagon spending, he would want to know what the military intends to use and for what purpose.

Mr. Musk has already called for the Pentagon to stop buying certain high-priced items like F-35 fighter jets, manufactured by one of his space-launch competitors, Lockheed Martin, in a program that costs the Pentagon more than $12 billion a year.

Image

Mr. Musk’s company SpaceX has become so valuable to the Pentagon that the Chinese government has suggested that it might target SpaceX assets if a war with China were to break out.Credit...Valerie Plesch for The New York Times

Yet Mr. Musk’s extensive business interests make any access to strategic secrets about China a serious problem in the view of ethics experts. Officials have said revisions to the war plans against China have focused on upgrading the plans for defending against space warfare. China has developed a suite of weapons that can attack U.S. satellites.

Mr. Musk’s constellations of low-earth orbit Starlink satellites, which provide data and communications services from space, are considered more resilient than traditional satellites. But he could have an interest in learning about whether or not the United States could defend his satellites in a war with China.

Participating in a classified briefing on the China threat with some of the most senior Pentagon and U.S. military officials would be a tremendously valuable opportunity for any defense contractor seeking to sell services to the military.

Mr. Musk could gain insight into new tools that the Pentagon might need and that SpaceX, where he remains the chief executive, could sell.

Contractors working on relevant Pentagon projects generally do have access to certain limited war planning documents, but only once war plans are approved, said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on defense strategy. Individual executives rarely if ever get exclusive access to top Pentagon officials for such a sensitive briefing, Mr. Harrison said.

“Musk at a war-planning briefing?” he said. “Giving the CEO of one defense company unique access seems like this could be grounds for a contract protest and is a real conflict of interest.”

Mr. Musk’s SpaceX is already being paid billions of dollars by the Pentagon and federal spy agencies to help the United States build new military satellite networks to try to confront rising military threats from China. SpaceX launches most of these military satellites for the Pentagon on its Falcon 9 rockets, which take off from launchpads SpaceX has set up at military bases in Florida and California.

The company separately has been paid hundreds of millions of dollars by the Pentagon that now relies heavily on SpaceX’s Starlink satellite communications network for military personnel to transmit data worldwide.

In 2024, SpaceX was granted about $1.6 billion in Air Force contracts. That does not include classified spending with SpaceX by the National Reconnaissance Office, which has hired the company to build it a new constellation of low-earth orbit satellites to spy on China, Russia and other threats.

Mr. Trump has already proposed that the United States build a new system the military is calling Golden Dome, a space-based missile defense system that recalls what President Ronald Reagan tried to deliver. (The so-called Star Wars system Mr. Reagan had in mind was never fully developed.)

Perceived missile threats from China — be it nuclear weapons or hypersonic missiles or cruise missiles — are a major factor that led Mr. Trump to sign an executive order recently instructing the Pentagon to start work on Golden Dome.

Image

The site of SpaceX Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas. The Pentagon briefing could help Elon Musk gain insight into new tools that the Pentagon might need and that SpaceX, where he remains the chief executive, could sell.Credit...Callaghan O'Hare for The New York Times

Even starting to plan and build the first components of the system will cost tens of billions of dollars, according to Pentagon officials, and most likely create large business opportunities for SpaceX, which already provides rocket launches, satellite structures, and space-based data communications systems, all of which will be required for Golden Dome.

Separately, Mr. Musk has been the focus of an investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general over questions about his compliance with his top-secret security clearance.

The investigations started last year after some SpaceX employees complained to government agencies that Mr. Musk and others at SpaceX were not properly reporting contacts or conversations with foreign leaders.

Air Force officials, before the end of the Biden administration, started their own review, after Senate Democrats asked questions about Mr. Musk and asserted that he was not complying with security clearance requirements.

The Air Force, in fact, had denied a request by Mr. Musk for an even higher level of security clearance, known as Special Access Program, which is reserved for extremely sensitive classified programs, citing potential security risks associated with the billionaire.

In fact, SpaceX has become so valuable to the Pentagon that the Chinese government has said it considers the company to be an extension of the U.S. military.

“Starlink Militarization and Its Impact on Global Strategic Stability” was the headline of one publication released last year from China’s National University of Defense Technology, according to a translation of the paper prepared by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Mr. Musk and Tesla, an electric vehicle company he controls, are heavily reliant on China, which houses one of the auto maker’s flagship factories in Shanghai. Unveiled in 2019, the state-of-the-art facility was built with special permission from the Chinese government, and now accounts for more than half of Tesla’s global deliveries. Last year, the company said in financial filings that it had a $2.8 billion loan agreement with lenders in China for production expenditures.

In public, Mr. Musk has avoided criticizing Beijing and signaled his willingness to work with the Chinese Communist Party. In 2022, he wrote a column for the magazine of the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s censorship agency, trumpeting his companies and their missions of improving humanity.

That same year, the billionaire told The Financial Times that China should be given some control over Taiwan by making a “special administrative zone for Taiwan that is reasonably palatable,” an assertion that angered politicians of the independent island. In that same interview, he also noted that Beijing sought assurances that he would not sell Starlink in China.

The following year at a tech conference, Mr. Musk called the democratic island “an integral part of China that is arbitrarily not part of China,” and compared the Taiwan-China situation to Hawaii and the United States.

On X, the social platform he owns, Mr. Musk has long used his account to praise China. He has said the country is “by far” the world leader in electric vehicles and solar power, and has commended its space program for being “far more advanced than people realize.” He has encouraged more people to visit the country, and posited openly about an “inevitable” Russia-China alliance.

Aaron Kessler contributed reporting.

Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times, focusing on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism issues overseas, topics he has reported on for more than three decades. More about Eric Schmitt

Eric Lipton is a Times investigative reporter, who digs into a broad range of topics from Pentagon spending to toxic chemicals. More about Eric Lipton

Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades. More about Julian E. Barnes

Ryan Mac covers corporate accountability across the global technology industry. More about Ryan Mac

Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent, reporting on the second, nonconsecutive term of Donald J. Trump. More about Maggie Haberman

2. Musk Set to Receive Top-Secret Briefing on U.S. War Plans for China

My first thought was will he even understand what he is hearing and seeing in the brief. But upon reflection, (and all possible conflicts of interests aside), I would like to be a fly in the wall and hear his responses to the briefing and the plan. I would like to know what questions he asked and what comments (and possible suggestions) he made.

With zero military experience he could be a kind of the 21st century "Napoleon's corporal." Although Napoleon believed that if his corporal could understand his orders then they would be able to be understood by his generals, in this case if the plans could be understood by Musk then could explain them to the people being the great communicator on X/twitter that he is (note sarcasm). I do seriously wonder what we will see on X/twitter after he takes the briefing. What will he reveal to the American people and the world about the plans and what will be his criticism of the US military?

The danger is that the plans could be "dumbed down" so as to not reveal any sensitive or classified information. This is not unprecedented. I doubt he will get the most classified briefings that the Generals would receive in the Tank. But in so doing, the danger is that they could be dumbed down so much that they might make little sense (especially because the plans likely rely on some highly classified technology or agreements with allies that DOD will not want revealed). And that will allow Musk to make sarcastic brutal critiques of DOD. And if he does make such comments will the DOD Rapid Response X/twitter account come to DOD's defense and brand Musk's comments as "fake news."

Musk Set to Receive Top-Secret Briefing on U.S. War Plans for China

The Trump adviser is expected to get a look at the Pentagon blueprint despite his companies’ financial stakes in China and defense contracts

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/musk-to-receive-top-secret-briefing-on-u-s-war-plans-for-china-922eafdf?mod=hp_lead_pos1

By Alexander Ward

Follow and Nancy A. Youssef

Updated March 20, 2025 11:32 pm ET

Elon Musk leads the Department of Government Efficiency. Photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

WASHINGTON—Elon Musk is scheduled to receive a briefing Friday on the U.S. military’s top-secret war plans for China, according to two U.S. officials, giving the wealthy businessman and presidential adviser insight into one of the Pentagon’s most closely guarded operational blueprints.

Musk is expected to be briefed on how U.S. forces would fight in a potential China war, including maritime tactics and targeting plans, the officials said. China will be one of several topics to be discussed at the Defense Department, one of the officials said.

The meeting underscores the crosscutting interests Musk has as a senior adviser to President Trump, with a powerful and expansive role in the new administration. It could give him—the head of Tesla, which relies on China for car production, and of SpaceX, a U.S. defense contractor—access to sensitive military secrets unavailable to business competitors.

Musk, according to one person familiar with the arrangements, is receiving the briefing because he asked for one. He has a security clearance but isn’t in the military chain of command or known to be a military adviser to Trump.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed that Musk would visit the Pentagon on Friday. In a statement on X, Musk’s social-media site, Hegseth disputed that the presidential adviser would receive a sensitive China briefing, saying, “It’s an informal meeting about innovation, efficiencies & smarter production.”

In a post on Truth Social on Thursday evening, Trump said that “China will not even be mentioned or discussed” at the Pentagon meeting.

Michael Sobolik, a senior fellow for U.S.-China competition at the Hudson Institute in Washington, said Pentagon leadership might be trying to protect themselves against Musk cutting sensitive military programs. “But they don’t need to give Musk the full briefing to avoid that outcome,” he said.

Specific details of the U.S. war plans for China aren’t known and are only discussed publicly by Defense Department officials and senior officers in the broadest terms. The Pentagon maintains operational plans for many potential adversaries and updates them regularly.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is among those expected to be at the briefing. Photo: Kent Nishimura/Reuters

Adm. Sam Paparo, the head of the Indo-Pacific Command, said last month in remarks at a defense forum in Hawaii that the U.S. has “war-winning advantages” in any possible conflict with China in space and cyber capabilities, as well as a “generational advantage” in submarines.

Paparo is expected to participate in the Musk briefing with Hegseth, Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg and Adm. Christopher Grady, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The National Security Council and Indo-Pacific Command, which is responsible for U.S. military operations in Asia, declined to comment on the Pentagon briefing for Musk, which was earlier reported by the New York Times.

Musk, who leads the Department of Government Efficiency, has taken a growing interest in U.S. national security policy. The visit will be Musk’s first known appearance at the Pentagon this year.

He has weighed in recently on defense acquisitions, calling on the Pentagon to stop buying Lockheed Martin’s F-35 jet fighters and to shift to a large fleet of drones. “Manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones anyway,” he posted to X, his social-media site, in November. “Will just get pilots killed.”

Lockheed Martin owns half of a rocket company that is one of SpaceX’s biggest competitors in the space launch industry.

Musk recently made an unannounced visit to the National Security Agency, an intelligence agency focused on communications intercepts, to discuss operations and staff reductions. He was also involved in dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development and folding its remaining functions into the State Department.

Musk has made positive comments about China in recent years, leading Beijing to hope he could be a conduit to Trump. In 2023, Musk said he was “kind of pro-China” during a conversation about whether Beijing would be helpful in writing global rules about artificial intelligence.

“I have some vested interests in China, but honestly, I think China is underrated and I think the people of China are really awesome and there is a lot of positive energy there.”

Musk has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a close partner of China, the country that has supported Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. During one of their conversations, Putin asked Musk not to activate a Starlink internet satellite above Taiwan as a favor to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Top U.S. officials in both parties have warned that China is the greatest danger to American security. China has increasingly threatened Taiwan. Western intelligence officials think China is working toward being ready to invade Taiwan by 2027, potentially drawing the U.S. into a regional conflict.

Write to Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com and Nancy A. Youssef at nancy.youssef@wsj.com

Appeared in the March 21, 2025, print edition as 'Musk to Receive Briefing on U.S.’s China War Plans'.

3. The Warship That Shows Why the U.S. Navy Is Falling Behind China

The Warship That Shows Why the U.S. Navy Is Falling Behind China

A blizzard of design changes by the military have put production of the USS Constellation years behind schedule and millions over budget. Labor shortages, old equipment and rising steel costs aren’t helping the industry.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/warship-shows-why-u-s-navy-is-falling-behind-china-94cb9a87?mod=hp_lead_pos8

By Alistair MacDonald

Follow and Gordon Lubold

March 20, 2025 9:00 pm ET

When a Wisconsin shipyard won the contract to build a new class of Navy frigate in 2020, the project was meant to address an embarrassing reality: The U.S. is now the global laggard in building warships.

Stocked with high-tech weaponry to protect against enemy submarines, missiles and drones, the USS Constellation was expected to be ready for the open water in 2026. That was because the U.S. chose a proven design from Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri FCT -2.27%decrease; red down pointing triangle in an effort to speed the process.

Then the Navy started tinkering.

The hull was lengthened by 24 feet to accommodate larger generators and reconfigured in part because the design was based on the relatively benign conditions in the Mediterranean, and the propeller changed for better acoustic performance, among other time-consuming adjustments.

The effect: Like almost all other U.S. naval vessels, the Constellation is already years behind schedule and millions over budget.

A rendering of what the USS Constellation will look like. The frigate is still under construction. Photo: Fincantieri Marinette Marine

Physical construction began in mid-2022, and after more than 2½ years, the project is only 10% complete, according to a person familiar with the timeline.

At this pace, including the two years of design time before building began, the ship will be completed in a total of nine years—around twice as long as it took an Italian shipyard to build the vessels it is based on. The Constellation, the first in what is expected to be around 20 to be built, is projected to cost at least $600 million more than its original estimate of $1.3 billion.

The Constellation’s slow production and extra costs help explain why almost nobody wants to buy new American warships—even as allies clamor for U.S. fighter jets and other weapons.

A festering problem for the U.S. has turned into an acute one, as the world order shifts rapidly and the Pentagon gears up for a potential conflict in Asia that experts believe would be fought in large part on the seas.

The issue is top of mind for President Trump, who is racing to address the problem even as his tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum would likely increase the cost of the domestically produced metals shipbuilders use.

Trump said in his speech to Congress this month that his administration wants to create a new Office of Shipbuilding, with the goal of producing more of both commercial and military vessels. The administration is also preparing an executive order aimed at reviving U.S. shipbuilding and cutting Chinese dominance in the industry.

China years ago leapfrogged America in making naval craft faster and for less money. From 2014 to 2023, China’s navy launched 157 ships while the U.S. launched 67, according to independent defense analyst Tom Shugart. The Chinese fleet is now the world’s largest, although the U.S. Navy says the quality of its ships are still better.

The Wisconsin shipyard, showing a different ship under construction, in June 2024. Photo: Mike Roemer/AP

Most countries are faster at building. Of 20 different frigates made recently or set for completion soon in 10 different countries, all but one were or will be built in less time than the U.S.’s Constellation, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Frigates are the medium-size warships used for submarine warfare and escorting larger ships, among other tasks. U.S. construction of destroyers, the larger, heavily armed warships, is also slower than other countries.

“Every shipbuilding delay, every maintenance backlog and every inefficiency is an opening for our adversaries to challenge our [naval] dominance,” said John Phelan, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of the Navy, to the Senate Armed Services Committee last month during his confirmation process.

Fincantieri’s American subsidiary, which owns the Wisconsin shipyard, recently reshuffled several senior U.S. positions, including its chief executive. The company said after winning the Constellation contract that it would invest more than $350 million to upgrade equipment in its Wisconsin yards.

A spokeswoman for the Naval Sea Systems Command, the department that deals with shipbuilding, said nearly all the changes made to the Constellation happened during its design rather than construction. “Any modifications made during the design phase have been to enhance the lethality, survivability, and fleet commonality of the frigate for U.S. Navy operations,” she said. The department said the pace of the Constellation’s construction was intentionally managed to ensure smooth production and long-term quality.

Trump’s preference

The industry faces myriad challenges, including high steel costs that could rise further amid an ongoing trade war. The U.S. also lacks a commercial shipbuilding industry, which means military vessels can’t share supply chains for many of the same or similar components, or for raw materials or workers.

Shipyards also struggle with aging equipment—sometimes dating to before World War II—and labor shortages, especially in the skilled trades, aggravated by an almost complete ban on foreign workers for military shipbuilding that doesn’t exist in most other countries.

Expected construction times for select naval frigates built or started between 2007 and 2025, by country of production

years

U.K.

Cardiff

Venturer*

U.S.

Constellation*

Spain

Bonifaz*

GERMANY

Niedersachsen

Al-Qadeer

CHINA

Nanyang

FRANCE

Aquitaine*

Kimon*

ITALY

Carlo Bergamini*

Spartaco Schergat

NETHERLANDS

Unnamed ASWF Class

SOUTH KOREA

Donghae

Cheonan

JAPAN

Agano

years

*First production of new class, which typically results in longer construction times.

Note: Time taken from start of construction to handing over to client navy

Sources: the navy, BAE Systems, Babcock (U.K.); state media (China); Fincantieri (U.S., Italy); Navantia (Spain); Damen, Blohm & Voss (Germany); Naval Group (France); Damen (Netherlands); Hyundai (South Korea); Mitsubishi (Japan)

Andrew Barnett/WSJ

Making matters worse is the Pentagon’s proclivity for meddling in designs.

The Navy has made so many changes in the Constellation that a ship that was supposed to share 85% of the design of its Italian parent now has just 15% in common, according to Eric Labs, senior analyst for Naval Forces and Weapons at the Congressional Budget Office.

“We have an insatiable demand for capabilities at times…we struggle to say stop,” said Brett Seidle, civilian deputy to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition, at a congressional hearing this month.

Trump himself has weighed in on what he wants in ships—especially regarding their appearance. During his first administration, he summoned the Secretary of the Navy at the time, Richard Spencer, to the Oval Office. Spencer showed Trump several photo-boards of various Navy ships, including carriers, frigates and destroyers.

Trump went through the photos, which ended up on the floor, lamenting the ugliness of the ships, according to people familiar with the episode. Spencer then showed him pictures of several other frigates, and Trump admired some of those belonging to Russia. But it was the long mothballed USS New Jersey, whose large guns, while impressive, are now obsolete, that caught his eye.

“There!” Trump said, and pointed to the picture of the ship, which was built during WW2 and also served during the Vietnam War. “Why can’t we build ships that look like this?”

A White House official said the description of the episode wasn’t accurate.

Trump on the visit to Fincantieri in 2020. Photo: saul loeb/AFP/Getty Images

The Navy’s most recent target is to increase combat ships from 295 today to 390 by 2054. Taking into account the ships that will be retired in that time, U.S. shipyards would need to produce substantially more than they have over the past 10 years, according to a January report by the CBO. Some estimates suggest the U.S. needs to roughly double its rate of production.

The CBO predicts shipbuilding will cost around $40 billion a year over the next 30 years, or 17% more than the Navy estimates.

Fighter jets, missiles

U.S. fighter jets and some missile systems—while also plagued with high costs and delays—don’t face the same type of international competition that U.S. shipbuilders face. As a result, Lockheed Martin’s F-35 has become the world’s most sought after fighter jet and the Patriot missile defense system, among other U.S. weaponry, has a multiyear foreign order book.

But newly built American ships very rarely beat European and South Korean rivals when selling abroad.

“American ships are fearsome weapons of war…but they are expensive to build and also expensive to run,” said Jeremy Kyd, a former vice admiral in Britain’s Royal Navy who had U.S. ships under his command in joint exercises.

Modifying the Constellation

Topside modified to accommodate U.S. Navy warfare systems

Parent design

Displacement increased by about 500 tons for margins and growth

Constellation design

23.6 ft

Propeller changed for improved acoustic performance

Bow modified to remove sonar dome and enclosure deck for stability

Hull expanded to accommodate larger generators

Note: Drawing is approximate. Parent design is based on the Bergamini class European Multi-Mission Frigate.

Source: U.S. Government Accountability Office

Roque Ruiz/WSJ

Trump didn’t announce details of what efforts an Office of Shipbuilding would make, other than rolling out tax incentives for U.S. makers. An early draft of the planned executive order, which hasn’t been issued, included 18 proposed measures ranging from raising fees on Chinese-built ships entering the U.S. and investing that in domestic shipbuilding, to raising wages for nuclear-shipyard workers.

Seidle defended the Navy and U.S. shipbuilders, despite the delays. “U.S. shipbuilders continue to produce the highest quality, safest and most advanced warships on the globe,” he said.

Of the handful of nations able to make aircraft carriers, the U.S.’s are much larger and powered by nuclear energy. Much of the weapons and technology are still world leading.

But U.S. naval shipbuilding has fallen behind in some key metrics. In the 2000s, attack submarines that used to take six years to build now take nine, and aircraft carriers that used to take eight years now require 11, according to the CBO.

The delays have contributed substantially to massive cost overruns, only a third of which can be attributed to shipbuilding inflation, the CBO said.

The Pentagon spent around $2.6 billion to build each nuclear powered submarine launched between 2010 and 2021. At the same time, Britain, a notoriously expensive manufacturer, was building a similar version for under $2 billion. Among the reasons: The U.S. subs were made in sections at two different companies’ shipyards and then towed on barges some 500 miles to be connected, while the British subs were produced in one location.

The U.S. Navy has different standards from foreign navies, often more exacting as it seeks to make ships more “survivable” when hit by weapons or bad weather. That can result in major differences, such as the type of weaponry, or minor variations.

In one example, most naval ships have several generators spread around the vessel, so if one goes, equipment can still work. But the U.S. Navy typically wants the generator and its switchboard to sit together, according to a person familiar with the matter. The thinking goes that because one is useless without the other, separating them provides two targets, increasing the chance of one part taking a hit and rendering both useless.

So generators and bulky switchboards that are separated in Italy’s frigates were located together in the Constellation, causing a redesign of the engine rooms to accommodate the additional equipment, the person said.

The Naval Sea Systems Command said locating the generators and switchboards together isn’t a blanket requirement for all vessels but is based on operational requirements, among other factors.

Expected construction times for select naval destroyers built or started between 2007 and 2024, by country of production

years

U.S.

Patrick Gallagher

John Basilone

U.K.

Duncan

CHINA

Nanchang

JAPAN

Shiranui

SOUTH KOREA

Jeongjo the Great

Dasan Jeong Yakyong

years

Note: Time taken from start of construction to handing over to client navy

Sources: the navies; state media (China); BAE Systems (U.K.); General Dynamics (U.S.); Hyundai (South Korea); Mitsubishi (Japan)

Andrew Barnett/WSJ

Fincantieri and the Navy began building the ship in August 2022 before its design had been finalized, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office.

More changes came as the building progressed. Officials insisted that the computer systems that control communications, weapons and other functions needed more cooling. That meant greater ventilation and larger so-called chill pumps, and another reshuffling of space.

The overall changes caused the ship to gain weight, to 10% above the initial plans. That means the Constellation will be slower than the original design for the ship, already in use in French and Italian navies.

The Navy and Fincantieri are still finalizing critical design documents that inform the 3-D modeling needed to build the ship, according to people familiar with the matter. The Secretary of the Navy, however, certified to Congress in 2022 that the basic and functional design was complete, according to the Congressional Record.

Decision by committee

Some shipyards said the Navy can be overly bureaucratic and that it makes too many decisions by committee. They complain that U.S. officials are slow to approve new equipment.

On the Constellation, multiple rounds of review by the Navy to approve technical requirements led to extreme slowdowns in construction, said Shelby Oakley, a director in the GAO. In one example, Fincantieri had to respond to over 170 critical comments from the Navy on one—out of hundreds—of supporting documents vetted by the military.

“The Navy peeled back the onion and realized how far the design was from meeting the Navy’s standards, and had to take a strategic pause to try and right the ship,” said Oakley.

Workers left the Wisconsin shipyard in June 2024. Photo: Mike Roemer/Associated Press

The Navy complains U.S. shipyards don’t invest enough in staff and equipment.

McKinsey analysts in a recent report on U.S. shipyards found equipment, including metal casting machines, cranes and transport systems, that was decades old, some harking back to before WW2.

The report said equipment broke down, causing delays to contracts. In some cases, it was so old that replacement parts had to be fabricated from scratch because they were no longer commercially available.

Some shipbuilding executives said European naval yards typically have more modern equipment than those in America.

Some investments have made improvements. In the so-called panel-line at Fincantieri’s Wisconsin yard, where major ship sections are joined together, the addition of robotic welders means that there are now six workers as opposed to the 24 previously needed.

That is important because the U.S. industry has a dearth of experienced older shipyard workers—with the skills necessary for the complex fabrications. A third of workers in Fincantieri’s U.S. shipyard are over 50, compared with almost 40% in Italy. Last year, the Navy blamed inexperienced new hands at a Huntington Ingalls Industries shipyard in Virginia for faulty welding on 26 vessels.

A welder worked at Fincantieri in 2020. Photo: carlos barria/Reuters

Write to Alistair MacDonald at Alistair.Macdonald@wsj.com

4. 'The US as seen by Trump only relies on force. They don't care about their soft power'

A view from France (and we know how the White House spokesperson will respond).

LIO = liberal institutional order.

Excerpts:

The most astonishing thing about this posturing is that the LIO, though it has failed in terms of peacekeeping, has, in many respects, by no means proven unworthy. The institutional framework doesn't explain everything, of course, but, without trying to establish direct causality, we can make the following point: In 1950, 59% of the world's population lived in extreme poverty; this figure is 8.5% today – figures quoted by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times, on February 11. Let's face it, the atrocious years of free trade and the LIO do have quite a track record!

The Global South has caught up to the North. Although inequalities have exploded within many countries, the West has, under this international order, lost its monopoly on wealth. China's emergence owes a great deal to the "system" the US put in place. Nevertheless, the American economy has continued to post growth rates that would make Europeans jealous.

With all its flaws, its share of hypocrisy and its Western-centricity, the LIO nevertheless represents an attempt to regulate relations between states. On his Substack, American economist Paul Krugman hails the US effort "after World War II" to be a different sort of "Great Power": One that sought to create "willing allies," not tributaries; to favor "widespread prosperity," not predation; to set up global institutions, not "imperial" rule; and promote the rule of law, not that of "raw power." Many American presidents have dealt blows to this ideal. Trump could put the final nail in its coffin.

'The US as seen by Trump only relies on force. They don't care about their soft power'

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2025/03/20/the-us-as-seen-by-trump-only-relies-on-force-they-don-t-care-about-their-soft-power_6739364_23.html

Column

Alain Frachon

Columnist

Less than three months after his return to the White House, the American president is continuing to tear down institutions the US established in the aftermath of World War II, writes Le Monde columnist Alain Frachon.

Published yesterday at 9:38 pm (Paris) 3 min read Lire en français

Donald Trump, a spoiled child in a room full of toys, is destroying what his predecessors bequeathed him: The liberal international order (let's call it the LIO). He is systematically breaking down this set of institutions established by the US in the aftermath of World War II. The system had its faults, but it's not impossible that we might soon come to regret its disappearance.

The institutional pyramid imagined in 1945 was an ambitious one: First, the UN system, then a network of alliances with the US's European (NATO) and Asian allies; support for the European Union project; the promotion of free trade; support for democracy; and finally, an attachment to – or at least a custom of upholding – the rules thus defined, instead of sole power relations. The left has often seen this framework as a front for American imperialism. The right has long been suspicious of it, seeing it as an instrument designed to curb the sovereignty of nations. Indeed, everyone – the West, first and foremost – has been unfaithful to the LIO, when it was still known as "Pax Americana."

What are we witnessing today? The embodiment of enlightened, cultured and tolerant conservatism, Britain's Lord Chris Patten explained: "We have Trump and his oligarchy of ignorant shoe shiners vandalizing the network of organizations, agreements and values – largely put in place by America since the Second World War." Quoted in The New York Times on February 19, Patten added that the aforementioned network has "given most of us, including America, on the whole an extraordinary degree of peace and prosperity."

The rights of the powerful

The LIO has been losing credibility for several years now. There are many reasons for this. Trump gave it a few heavy blows during his first term in office. Less than three months after returning to the White House, he is continuing to tear it down.

<img src="https://img.lemde.fr/2025/03/18/0/0/7273/4849/664/0/75/0/49464ff_ftp-import-images-1-xr0sgi0xjpvq-5349725-01-06.jpg" alt="Donald Trump at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in Washington, on March 17, 2025." /> Donald Trump at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in Washington, on March 17, 2025. JIM WATSON / AFP

He has shown open contempt for the UN, and Washington is going to reduce its contribution. The Americans have left the World Health Organization (WHO). Trump is going to leave the World Trade Organization (WTO) to die, and is hell-bent on building a wall of tariffs around the US. The Paris Agreements were abandoned. The agreement to control Iran's nuclear program was torpedoed in 2018. He readily denigrates NATO and damages its credibility.

Column Subscribers only 'By weakening the Atlantic Alliance, Trump is helping the Putin-Xi partnership'

In violation of the UN Charter, Trump defends the right of powerful states to expand their national territory by force. He scorns the European Union, saying it "was formed in order to screw the US" and calling it "very, very nasty."

Nothing justifies such a regression, neither a struggle against budget deficits, nor the US' multi-faceted rivalry with China. Trump has put forward only one explanation: The international order only serves, according to him, to cheat the US. It costs them too much.

Read more Subscribers only How the US went from supporting Ukraine to abandoning it

With Trump, one America leaves, a pillar of the Western bloc, surrounded by friends; and another one enters. This one also has its roots in the nation's DNA: A country that doesn't practice isolationism, but rather interventionism with unilateralist tendencies. I, America, stand alone. A superpower like all the others, without a universal message nor claims of "exceptionalism," disregarding its allies and any foreign commitments. Such is Trump's definition of national "greatness."

A certain track record

This country only relies on force. It has no use for its soft power. For Trump, Hollywood is populated by America's enemies. America's development agency, USAID, a useful emergency service in Africa and elsewhere, which accounted for 0.7% of the federal budget, was sabotaged by "co-president" Elon Musk. USAID and Hollywood were also, though not only, two ideological weapons serving the US. Moscow and Beijing are well aware of this, and have applauded the dismantling of American soft power.

Read more Subscribers only USAID freeze hampers work of rights activists in Iran

The most astonishing thing about this posturing is that the LIO, though it has failed in terms of peacekeeping, has, in many respects, by no means proven unworthy. The institutional framework doesn't explain everything, of course, but, without trying to establish direct causality, we can make the following point: In 1950, 59% of the world's population lived in extreme poverty; this figure is 8.5% today – figures quoted by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times, on February 11. Let's face it, the atrocious years of free trade and the LIO do have quite a track record!

Newsletter

LE MONDE IN ENGLISH

The Global South has caught up to the North. Although inequalities have exploded within many countries, the West has, under this international order, lost its monopoly on wealth. China's emergence owes a great deal to the "system" the US put in place. Nevertheless, the American economy has continued to post growth rates that would make Europeans jealous.

With all its flaws, its share of hypocrisy and its Western-centricity, the LIO nevertheless represents an attempt to regulate relations between states. On his Substack, American economist Paul Krugman hails the US effort "after World War II" to be a different sort of "Great Power": One that sought to create "willing allies," not tributaries; to favor "widespread prosperity," not predation; to set up global institutions, not "imperial" rule; and promote the rule of law, not that of "raw power." Many American presidents have dealt blows to this ideal. Trump could put the final nail in its coffin.

Postscript: In exile and underground, Russian filmmakers shoot: The 11^th edition of the Paris & its region Russian Film Festival will run from March 20 to April 5, in Paris and the towns of Taverny (northwest of Paris), Malakoff (south), Suresnes (west), spearheaded by actress Macha Méril.

Alain Frachon (Columnist)

5. Why Many Americans Are On Board With Federal Worker Firings

I see these comments every day on my social media feeds from people who even used to work in the civil service and military (though it was not like this when they were there).

The hatred for American civil servants by fellow Americans is so troubling. But the relentless verbal abuse of by from political leaders is what makes people think this way.

If we still had DEI we might have to make the American civil servant a protected class since they are subject to so much abuse. We have created the perception of the American civil servant as the "other," subject to torment and abuse because they are seen as the enemy and can now be blamed for all of America's ills. (note sarcasm).

Why Many Americans Are On Board With Federal Worker Firings

Some envision bloat and cushy jobs. ‘Let ’em go; get rid of them.’

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/why-many-americans-are-on-board-with-federal-worker-firings-d5d58e98?mod=hp_lead_pos11

By Scott Calvert

Follow and Harriet Torry

March 21, 2025 5:00 am ET

Government employees overall have long experienced a lower rate of layoffs than their private-sector counterparts. Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg News

Retired business owner Catherine Byrd is thrilled with President Trump’s push to shrink what she considers a bloated federal workforce. And she isn’t at all concerned for the tens of thousands of people losing jobs.

“I don’t feel bad for them a bit. I’ve worked in the private sector all my life,” and got laid off from jobs in the early days, the Georgia resident said. “You know what you do? You go out and find another job, and there are plenty of jobs to find.”

While there is outcry over thousands of federal workers losing their jobs to Department of Government Efficiency cuts and the chaos that has unleashed, a cohort of Americans aren’t sorry to see them go. Politics, personal experiences filing taxes or time in interminable post office and DMV lines lead many people to take a dim view of government workers at all levels.

Resentment also stems from a sense that federal workers enjoy perks, like guaranteed pensions, which are rare in the private sector.

Randy Johnson says he voted for President Trump Photo: Molly Fitting

Government employees overall have long experienced a lower rate of layoffs than their private-sector counterparts, especially during shocks such as the early days of Covid-19, data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis show. Federal employees also tend to spend less time unemployed because they are less likely to lose their jobs than workers in the private sector, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

“How many people get fired from a government position? Not many,” said Randy Johnson, 75, a retired math teacher in Tennessee who voted for Trump. He also said he doesn’t hear enough about how the cuts might be “a good thing to try to reduce the size of government.”

The idea that government workers are a problem, not a plus, has long been a talking point on the right. Former President Ronald Reagan famously quipped that “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” Trump has said he thinks the federal payroll is laden with people who aren’t doing their jobs. Polls show public trust in the federal government has plunged over the past seven decades.

President Ronald Reagan in 1986. Photo: Scott Applewhite/Associated Press

Elon Musk holding a chain saw handed to him by Argentine President Javier Milei at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, in Maryland in February. Photo: Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press

Pew Research Center surveys in recent years show Americans roughly split on whether the government is too big or too small, but there is a stark partisan divide. A Pew poll this year found 38% of Republicans expressing confidence in federal career employees, compared with 72% of Democrats.

“Democrats have tended to favor a government that does more to solve problems. Republicans have been more likely to say the government does too much,” said Jocelyn Kiley, the Pew Research Center’s director of politics research. The country cut more than 400,000 federal jobs during the eight-year Clinton administration.

Robert Shapiro, professor of government at Columbia University, said public support for federal workers varies widely, with agencies such as the military, Social Security, Medicare and national parks generally viewed more favorably. “There’s actually a lot more support there for specific aspects of a more expansive government,” he said.

Polling reveals a more muddled view of the Department of Government Efficiency’s workforce-slashing efforts. A Reuters/Ipsos poll this month showed 59% support for downsizing the government, and another poll this month, conducted by Quinnipiac University, found 60% disapproved of the way Elon Musk and DOGE are dealing with federal workers.

“We do need to sit down and say, ‘Where do we have bloated government?’” said Mary Dixson, a college professor in San Antonio. But Dixson, a self-described economic conservative who leans left on social issues, said workers and agencies are being cut without a rigorous assessment.

Mary Dixson describes herself as an economic conservative who leans left on social issues. Photo: Mary Dixson

“If you just say you’re firing 2,000 people but can’t say what any of them do, that’s not data-driven,” said Dixson, 53, who declined to say how she voted in the 2024 presidential election. “It would be really nice if there was a lot of thought and conversation and transparency.”

By one measure, the public’s assessment of federal workers has been climbing. Citizen satisfaction with government services rose last year to the highest level since 2017, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index. And while complaints filed with the federal government increased from 2021 to 2024, the government’s handling of complaints also improved during that span in the eyes of the public, the company said in a report released last fall.

Two judges recently blocked the firings of probationary workers who were hired or promoted in the past year or two, though their ability to keep the jobs is uncertain. Government agencies have also granted voluntary buyouts to tens of thousands of employees.

Recently laid-off contractor Meredith Lopez said the “general callousness” toward federal workers is disheartening.

“I think people forget that working in public service is not just a job, it can be a calling for many people,” said Lopez, 38, who worked for about a year as a Dallas-based communications specialist for the U.S. Agency for International Development, which distributes medicine, food and often lifesaving aid to impoverished nations.

“For me, it is really about the ability to help people and communities on a personal level,” said Lopez, who most recently worked on programs in nearly 60 countries including a recycling program to help clean up rivers in Honduras.

Judy Cameron felt public scorn before losing her Internal Revenue Service job in February. “People would look at me, ‘Oh, you work for the IRS? Oh, my God,’” she said in an interview on March 14. This was before she and many other workers were reinstated by court order and put on indefinite administrative leave. “Like, yeah, and I love it, this is the best job I’ve ever had. And then they just gave me a dirty look and walked away from me like I had the plague.”

Cameron, 45, made $19 an hour as a tax examining clerk at the Kansas City, Mo., office. A registered Republican who voted for Trump, Cameron said people responding to her social-media posts have said the president is “just doing America good.”

“All I know is I did not appreciate being fired,” she said. “Let me do something wrong to fire me…It was just ‘Oh here, let’s kick you out like trash.’”

Darien Rizo, a 35-year-old banker in Tennessee who also voted for Trump, said the lightning pace of the reductions means “some good people” have lost their jobs, and he thinks some federal services will probably take a hit in the short run. “But I’m pretty sure they’ll be able to adapt to the environment and make adjustments, if they have to dial back and hire more people,” he said.

Mainly, he believes the DOGE effort is uncovering corruption and saving taxpayers money. “I think what’s happening is revolutionary,” he said.

Republican Trump voter Raymond Reed is another DOGE fan. “Support it? I’m telling them to do more of it,” the 70-year-old California rental-property owner said. “Let ’em go; get rid of them.”

EU presses on with steel 'porcupine strategy' for Ukraine as Russia tries to end Western support

By LORNE COOK

Updated 7:21 PM EDT, March 20, 2025

AP · March 20, 2025

BRUSSELS (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s key peace demand that Western allies stop providing military aid and intelligence to Ukraine is quietly being ignored by the European Union.

As U.S.-led talks with Russia and Ukraine progress, without the Europeans at the table, the 27-nation bloc is pressing ahead with a steel “porcupine strategy” aimed at building the Ukrainian armed forces, and the country’s defense industry, into an even more formidable opponent.

At an EU summit on Thursday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that it’s “central” that Ukraine should remain an independent democratic nation that can continue its journey toward EU membership and “that it also has a strong army of its own after a peace agreement.”

“For us, it will be important to continue to support Ukraine significantly — as the European Union as a whole, as allies and friends and as individual countries,” Scholz told reporters in Brussels.

A few hours after he spoke, Scholz’s EU counterparts — with the exception of Hungary, which opposes the bloc’s “peace through strength” stance — called on member countries “to urgently step up efforts to address Ukraine’s pressing military and defence needs.”

Mindful of Russian deception in the past — the “little green men ” who annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, or the troop buildup in 2021 that Moscow denied would lead to any invasion — the Europeans are deeply skeptical about Putin’s intentions and whether he would accept any peace terms.

With the U.K. and other partners, some European countries are working on a deterrence force to police any future peace. At the same time, Ukraine’s best security guarantee, apart from the NATO membership that the U.S. refuses, is that its own army is strong and well supplied.

In a defense blueprint unveiled on Wednesday, the European Commission set out how it plans to meet Ukraine’s security needs, with EU money available to help bolster its defense industry, which produces arms and ammunition more cheaply and closer to the battlefield.

“Ukraine is currently the front line of European defense, resisting a war of aggression driven by the single greatest threat to our common security,” the document says. “The outcome of that war will be a determinative factor in our collective future for decades ahead.”

At the heart of the EU’s strategy is a commitment to provide air defense systems and missiles — including long-range precision warheads. In groups, countries would jointly purchase the equipment and financially back Ukraine’s own effort to obtain them.

Drones are a major advantage on the battlefield, and the EU intends to back Ukraine’s procurement of them and help it build its own production capacity, including through joint ventures between European and Ukrainian industries.

Another aim is to provide at least 2 million rounds of large-caliber artillery shells each year, and to continue a training effort that has helped to prepare more than 75,000 Ukrainian troops so far. In return, European troops will learn from Ukraine’s front-line experience.

Ukraine would also be able to take part in the EU’s space program, with access to the services provided by national governments in the area of global positioning, navigation, surveillance and communications.

Financially, and beyond the estimated 138 billion euros ($150 billion) already provided to Ukraine, the government in Kyiv would be able to secure cheap loans for defense purposes — as can EU countries and Norway — from a new fund worth 150 billion euros ($162 billion).

___

Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

AP · March 20, 2025

7. Nuclear experts pour cold water on US idea to restore and run Ukrainian power plant

Nuclear experts pour cold water on US idea to restore and run Ukrainian power plant | CNN

CNN · by Lauren Kent · March 20, 2025

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Enerhodar, Ukraine, once supplied roughly 20% of Ukraine’s energy but is now occupied by Russian forces and shut down.

Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters

CNN —

Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, occupied by Russian forces since the early days of the war, could be restored and protected by US ownership – at least according to the Americans.

But it’s unclear how the operation would work in practice, experts say, especially as the plant is on the front line, in territory controlled by Russia.

As part of ongoing talks to inch toward a partial ceasefire, US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky “discussed Ukraine’s electrical supply and nuclear power plants” during a Wednesday phone call, according to the US readout of the call.

“(Trump) said that the United States could be very helpful in running those plants with its electricity and utility expertise. American ownership of those plants would be the best protection for that infrastructure and support for Ukrainian energy infrastructure,” the readout said.

On Thursday, Zelensky disputed that section, saying: “In terms of ownership, we definitely did not discuss this with President Trump.” Zelensky stressed that “all nuclear power belongs to the (Ukrainian) state, including the temporarily occupied Zaporizhzhia region.”

Zelensky said the day before that Ukraine is ready to consider the possibility of American investment in the restoration and modernization of Zaporizhzhia. During a news conference after his call with Trump, Zelensky said they only discussed the occupied Zaporizhzhia plant, rather than Ukraine’s wider nuclear power network.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Getty Images/Reuters

“I believe that the station will not work under occupation. I believe that the station can be restored to operation,” Zelensky said, also cautioning that the process will take an estimated two years or more.

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the Zaporizhzhia plant supplied roughly 20% of Ukraine’s energy, with six reactors, making it the largest nuclear power station in Europe. Ukrainian staff remain at the plant under Russian occupation, and at one point staff were forced to work at “gunpoint.”

But the plant is now disconnected from the grid and the electricity infrastructure required to operate the plant safely has been damaged by drone strikes and frequent shelling. Russia also destroyed the nearby Kakhovka dam, emptying the reservoir that supplied water to cool the plant.

All six reactors are shut down and there are concerns over the plant’s ongoing maintenance, as explosions continue nearby, according to a UN nuclear watchdog team on the ground.

When asked about how the US could potentially run a Ukrainian nuclear plant, Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Fox News that he didn’t believe it would require American troops on the ground.

“Certainly, we have immense technical expertise in the United States to run those plants. I don’t think that requires boots on the ground,” Wright said. “But I’ll leave the foreign policy to President Trump and Secretary (of State Marco) Rubio. I know they are working tirelessly, ‘How do we bring peace to Ukraine?’

“But, if it was helpful to achieve that end – have the US run nuclear power plants in Ukraine? No problem. We can do that,” Wright added.

But experts question how feasible the idea floated by the Trump administration would be.

Operating the plant safely would require a safe, constant power supply to avoid a reactor meltdown, as well as the restoration of sufficient water supplies for cooling the plant.

“The first word of business would be to establish definitively that there could be no attacks on either the plant directly or on the supporting infrastructure – both power and water resources – and that would have to be iron-clad,” said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “So far, that kind of agreement has been elusive, as shelling occurs at a daily basis in the vicinity of the reactors.”

Kyiv has blamed Russian forces for destroying the Kakhovka dam in June 2023, emptying the reservoir that supplied water to cool the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters

“There’s no point in trying to rebuild a plant and operate it if it could be jeopardized at any moment,” Lyman said. “And the notion that US-ownership would somehow be more of a deterrent to Russia attacking the plant than now, when the Russians themselves control the plant, that doesn’t make sense either.”

The idea of US operation “raises a whole lot of logistical and technical and practical questions that are very unclear,” Lyman said, including the question of US liability for any accident at the facility. “With ownership or operator status comes responsibility.”

Nuclear experts have also highlighted that the US does not have any nuclear plants that use the same class of technology as Zaporizhzhia, which is a Soviet-designed “water water energetic reactor” (abbreviated as “VVER” in Russian).

“These are different technologies,” said Elena Sokova, director of the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, adding that there are strict licensing requirements for the plant’s operators.

“The US is an advanced country… but to be prepared to immediately take control of something that is of a different design, designed by different country, and where you have no experience of running it – I don’t think it’s a good solution or viable option.”

“Having said that, if we’re talking about a long process, I’m sure certain things could be worked out, particularly if there is an arrangement… to have the majority of the Ukrainian staff and operators running these reactors,” Sokova added.

Rescuers and police officers attend an anti-radiation drill in June 2023 in case of an emergency situation at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

Reuters

Ukraine wants role in restoration of plant

Zelensky emphasized on Wednesday night that safe restoration of the plant is in the whole world’s interest, and Ukraine should have a role in that “because it is ours, and this is our land, this is our station.”

The Ukrainian president said any return of the plant would not be possible without control of the area where it is located – the city of Enerhodar – on the Russian-occupied side of the Zaporizhzhia region.

“If you just hand over the station, and a meter away from the station, everything is occupied or there are Russian weapons, no one will work like that,” Zelensky told reporters, raising concerns that the plant could be restored with US and Ukrainian investment, only to have Russia possibly damage or destroy it again later.

As fighting continues along the front line, the dire situation at the Zaporizhzhia plant “remains unchanged,” Andrian Prokip, energy program director at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future, wrote last month.

“It still does not receive adequate maintenance and it continues to serve as a Russian ammunition depot,” said Prokip, also a senior associate at the Wilson Center.

CNN’s Svitlana Vlasova, Christian Edwards and DJ Judd contributed to this report.

CNN · by Lauren Kent · March 20, 2025

8. The Most Influential Trump Adviser You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

Very enlightening: personality, process, policy.

Excerpts:

Colleagues said Haley’s Catholic faith is a driving force. Born and raised in Richmond, Va., Haley, along with his twin sister, is the youngest of 11 children. He practiced law in New York and San Francisco until the 9/11 terrorist attacks inspired him to leave law and work in public policy for Gingrich. He and his wife, Bethany, have four children.

As the debate over federal abortion limits roiled the Republican Party in 2024, Haley worked to bridge the divide between Christian conservative leaders who didn’t want the party to abandon the issue and those who said strict limitations on abortion might alienate voters.

In spring 2024, Haley expressed to top campaign advisers that embracing a federal abortion ban would put Trump in a political box. Social conservatives were pushing Trump to endorse a 16-week abortion ban—a position that went even further than some swing states—but wasn’t nearly as restrictive as other states such as Iowa.

Haley worked with Trump and other advisers to draft a Republican platform that recognized a “right to life,” but ultimately left abortion up to the states. Trump’s team credited him with avoiding a political pitfall.

“He was a key part in ensuring that we did not get into a debate about weeks on abortion,” LaCivita said. “He was so trusted by the conservative right, the Christian right, he was able to fend off a lot of potential political issues.”

The Most Influential Trump Adviser You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

Vince Haley is the director of the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, and he has quietly shaped the president’s agenda

https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/the-most-influential-trump-adviser-youve-probably-never-heard-of-85ac4a3a?mod=latest_headlines

Vince Haley, far left, with candidate Donald Trump as he claimed victory in the Iowa caucuses last year. Illustration: WSJ; Brian Snyder/Reuters

By Meridith McGraw

Follow and Natalie Andrews

March 21, 2025 7:30 am ET

WASHINGTON—President Trump has stocked his administration with provocateurs whose frequent appearances on cable news and combative posture on social media have made them well-known public figures.

Vince Haley is not that guy.

Haley, who leads the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, prefers to stay out of the spotlight. He has posted on his largely dormant X account just once. He rarely gives interviews. And there are only a handful of photos of him online.

But his low profile belies his influence, according to interviews with nearly two dozen people who know him. Haley is one of a handful of trusted advisers who have worked for Trump since his 2016 campaign. A longtime speechwriter for the president, he has learned to channel Trump’s voice and identify policy proposals that win over conservative voters.

He is credited by his colleagues with shaping the Republican Party’s position on such issues as abortion, laying the groundwork during the 2024 campaign for Trump’s cryptocurrency and anti-DEI initiatives. He has also helped the president craft some of his more unconventional ideas, such as “Freedom Cities” and the “National Garden of American Heroes.”

“I can’t imagine anyone having greater insight into the president’s thought process, policies that appeal to him, what he likes, what he’s not going to like,” said Joe Grogan, who served as Domestic Policy Council director during Trump’s first term.

Haley, wearing a red tie, has worked for Trump since 2016, through three campaigns and two presidencies. Photo: Pablo Martínez Monsiváis/AP

As the head of the White House’s domestic-policy operation, Haley, 58 years old, works closely with Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy, on the rollout of the dozens of executive orders the president has signed since he took office two months ago. He has been tasked with making sure Trump follows through on the promises he made on the campaign trail. Inside the West Wing, the Domestic Policy Council is even informally referred to as the “Office of Promises Kept.”

“Vince, Stephen Miller, they are policy people, and I feel like the policy folks are ascendant,” said Kellyanne Conway, who served as senior counselor to Trump in his first term and remains close to the White House.

Haley is taking the lead on health policy, drug-price transparency, energy and housing, according to administration officials, as well as other projects important to the president, such as America’s 250th birthday and a commission on religious liberty.

Trump has tasked Miller with overseeing the president’s signature issues, such as immigration and the border, and he has given Elon Musk broad authority to slash government spending. The result is that Haley will have to navigate a crowded sphere of influence to ensure the Domestic Policy Council gets its work done

With Miller and Musk in that space, “That’s just a lot of cooks—and so that would complicate the job immensely,” said Cecilia Muñoz, who had the same position under President Barack Obama.

From Newt Gingrich to Donald Trump

Haley’s deep knowledge of Republican policy stems in part from years working under Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, and connections across a constellation of conservative groups.

Haley co-wrote a book with Gingrich in 2008 called “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” that advocated for expanded oil drilling. The book was part of a broader effort by Republicans to focus on increased energy production under the slogan “drill, baby, drill,” a phrase that Trump and his top advisers use to this day.

Haley has worked with Trump since 2016, through three presidential campaigns, two presidencies and countless changes in staff. During last year’s campaign, Haley often sat next to Trump on his private plane, according to a former campaign official.

He has long worked closely with Ross Worthington, another former Gingrich aide, who is now Trump’s director of speechwriting. Haley occupies Miller’s former office in the West Wing and works next door to Worthington.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Haley wrote a book called ‘Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less’ that advocated for expanded oil drilling. Photo: Evan Vucci/AP

The book was part of a Republican effort to focus on increased energy production under the slogan ‘drill, baby, drill.’ Photo: Alex Brandon/AP

In the first Trump White House and at campaign rallies, Haley would write speeches, and then stand next to the teleprompter operator as Trump veered off the script. He was also known to scan the crowd at Trump events to gauge how supporters responded to specific policies, such as banning transgender athletes. The most popular policies have moved to the center of Trump’s second-term agenda.

Haley “is kind of like the walking encyclopedia of DJT policy,” said Tony Fabrizio, Trump’s campaign pollster. “And he also has a really good understanding of the president’s voice and how the president would frame something.”

During last year’s presidential campaign, it was Haley’s idea to take Democrats’ contention that Trump was waging war on democracy—and turn it back on them, according to Chris LaCivita, a co-manager of Trump’s campaign. Haley wrote a series of speeches for Trump on how the real “war on democracy” was actually the weaponization of the justice system, a phrase that turned up on rally posters.

Shaping the Republican platform

Haley also played a central role in Trump’s embrace of cryptocurrency. He met with at least one cryptocurrency executive, David Bailey, who pitched a $15 million fundraiser and a speech for Trump at a cryptocurrency conference in Nashville, Tenn. Trump agreed to participate in the dinner and the speech.

Haley also wrote the language about cryptocurrency that appeared in last year’s Republican Party platform and sought ideas for how Trump could more aggressively embrace the issue.

Colleagues said Haley’s Catholic faith is a driving force. Born and raised in Richmond, Va., Haley, along with his twin sister, is the youngest of 11 children. He practiced law in New York and San Francisco until the 9/11 terrorist attacks inspired him to leave law and work in public policy for Gingrich. He and his wife, Bethany, have four children.

As the debate over federal abortion limits roiled the Republican Party in 2024, Haley worked to bridge the divide between Christian conservative leaders who didn’t want the party to abandon the issue and those who said strict limitations on abortion might alienate voters.

In spring 2024, Haley expressed to top campaign advisers that embracing a federal abortion ban would put Trump in a political box. Social conservatives were pushing Trump to endorse a 16-week abortion ban—a position that went even further than some swing states—but wasn’t nearly as restrictive as other states such as Iowa.

As a presidential adviser, Haley prefers to stay out of the spotlight but wields significant influence. Photo: jim watson/AFP/Getty Images

Haley worked with Trump and other advisers to draft a Republican platform that recognized a “right to life,” but ultimately left abortion up to the states. Trump’s team credited him with avoiding a political pitfall.

“He was a key part in ensuring that we did not get into a debate about weeks on abortion,” LaCivita said. “He was so trusted by the conservative right, the Christian right, he was able to fend off a lot of potential political issues.”

Write to Meridith McGraw at Meridith.McGraw@WSJ.com and Natalie Andrews at natalie.andrews@wsj.com

9. Military was instructed to search keywords including ‘first’ and ‘history’ during rushed purge of Pentagon websites

Orwellian.

"Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past".

"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped."

-George Orwell

Why didn't they just focus on the trainings that the services and other government agencies contracted? That is the crux of the problem. DOD and other government agencies (to comply with the policies promulgated by the executive and legislative branches) turned to contractors to develop programs and providing trainings. These trainings were among the most controversial. But we appear to have gone way too far.

In the quest to purge DEI we can see how the effort has been perceived as an erasure of history. And the use of algorithms replaced common sense and decency.

Military was instructed to search keywords including ‘first’ and ‘history’ during rushed purge of Pentagon websites | CNN Politics

CNN · by Natasha Bertrand, Haley Britzky, Oren Liebermann · March 20, 2025

United States Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks during a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact group at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2025.

Omar Havana/AP

CNN —

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s February memo ordering all diversity, equity and inclusion-related content to be removed from Pentagon websites was so vague that military units were instructed to simply use keyword searches like “racism,” “ethnicity,” “history” and “first” when searching for articles and photos to remove, and to interpret the directive “broadly,” multiple defense officials told CNN.

The implications of Hegseth’s memo were overwhelming, since the Defense Department manages over 1,000 public-facing websites and a huge visual media database known as DVIDS – with officials expected to purge everything relevant within two weeks. As a result, the manual work of individual units was supplemented with an algorithm that also used keywords to automate much of the purge, officials explained.

Other keywords officials were instructed to search for included “firsts” in history, including content about the first female ranger and first Black commanding general, as well as the words “LGBTQ,” “historic,” “accessibility,” “opportunity,” “belonging,” “justice,” “privilege,” respect” and “values,” according to a list reviewed by CNN.

One of the articles removed from the US Air Force Air Mobility Command website was about Jaspreet Singh, who was among the first Airmen in the entire US Air Force to be approved to wear a turban as a part of his uniform. The article was also removed from the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst website.

Airman 1st Class Briana Cespedes/US Air Force

A defense official acknowledged that, in hindsight, the strict timeline could have been handled differently and said the search terms were suggestions from an internal defense agency to help units meet the secretary’s directive.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a video posted to X on Thursday that the effort “was an arduous – but incredibly important – undertaking,” with an “aggressive timeline.”

“Every now and then, because of the realities of AI tools and other software, some important content was incorrectly pulled offline to be reviewed,” Parnell said. “We want to be very, very clear: History is not DEI. When content is either mistakenly removed – or if it is maliciously removed – we continue to work quickly to restore it.”

One defense official said of the removal of “firsts” in the military, “That’s just history. It’s not really DEI – it’s literally just history.”

Other keywords to look for included “gender based violence,” “cultural observances,” “cultural awareness,” “African ethnicity,” “Asian ethnicity,” “Caucasian ethnicity” and “Hispanic ethnicity.”

One defense official said every social media post was being pored over to the most minute detail, particularly for things like military partner training abroad. The people tasked with doing so had to determine if a post about a training event for another country’s military that included women, for example, could be tied back to some diversity or inclusion initiative — or if it was simply because the unit in question was largely made up of women.

Multiple units had to ask for extensions on the deadline because of the amount of content they were combing through in a short period of time, three officials said.

One of the officials raised concerns with their superior about potential violations of government record retention laws and asked for an extension to ensure everything was in compliance, but their request was denied, according to emails reviewed by CNN.

Another of the officials said they had to bring in a few other people to their team to help complete it in time, pulling them away from other tasks.

Meanwhile, “validation teams” are now being dispatched to military bases to ensure that troops are complying with Hegseth’s directive, according to one official and a statement from the Air Force. Multiple officials also confirmed to CNN that a lieutenant colonel has been dispatched from the Pentagon to travel to every combatant command around the world, holding meetings with staff and ensuring compliance with the policy.

The lack of guidance and the pressure from above to comply has led to a massive “overcorrection” and the removal of thousands of articles and images that were either completely unrelated to DEI issues – like Holocaust remembrance, suicide prevention and the Enola Gay aircraft – or that commemorated war heroes like World War II Medal of Honor recipient Pfc. Harold Gonsalves and historically significant service members like Jackie Robinson and the Navajo code-talkers.

This image provided by the US Marine Corps shows World War II Medal of Honor recipient Pfc. Harold Gonsalves during World War II.

US Marine Corps/AP

And while units made an effort to archive content internally, limitations that exist on various social media platforms made it difficult to do so in the instance officials determined the posts should be brought back. One defense official said Facebook and X, or Twitter, don’t have good archiving tools to keep posts, which meant they were left to take screenshots of them and delete them for good.

The department is now scrambling to republish some of the content, officials said. But the confusion reflected the “move fast and break things” approach the Trump administration has taken across the federal government that has at times gone too far and forced officials to reverse themselves.

The time and resources that have been spent on deleting websites and images has also struck officials as at odds with Hegseth’s stated focus on returning the focus of the military to “lethality” and “warfighting.”

“Of all the things they could be doing, the places they’re putting their focuses on first are really things that just don’t matter … This was literally a waste of our time,” a defense official said. “This does absolutely nothing to make us stronger, more lethal, better prepared.”

Another defense official told CNN on Wednesday that the department is now planning on doubling back and going through the content again with “human beings” to conduct a more thorough review – a process that will take even longer to complete.

CNN · by Natasha Bertrand, Haley Britzky, Oren Liebermann · March 20, 2025

10. The Iran Breakdown – New Iran Podcast on FDD

Available here on YouTube (other links below) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmEsAFBNkqsMQnt5pypwEX0ul0NyIjd3E

The Iran Breakdown

Iran is becoming one of the most important foreign policy issues in the Trump administration so far. The White House warned Iran it has two months to reach a nuclear deal with the U.S. or face potential military strikes on its nuclear facilities. Axios is reporting that the U.S. and Israel will hold high-level Iran consultations next week in Washington.

To understand why Iran is one of the most pressing foreign policy issues, FDD is releasing a new, ten-episode miniseries podcast – The Iran Breakdown – hosted by FDD chief executive Mark Dubowitz. The first three episodes are now available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

The series will feature a variety of experts discussing the challenges and opportunities related to Iran, as well as various threat vectors and geopolitical challenges in Iran and the Middle East.

11. Military was instructed to search keywords including ‘first’ and ‘history’ during rushed purge of Pentagon websites

Orwellian.

"Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past".

"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped."

-George Orwell

In the quest to purge DEI we can see how the effort has been perceived as an erasure of history. And the use of algorithms replaced common sense and decency.

And now we have validation teams going out throughout DOD to ensure compliance. Are they going to be inspecting every space in DOD looking for some evidence of DEI? Think of the expenditure of DOD personnel, time, and resources to conduct such an inspection (it won't be fraud and abuse but it will sure be wasteful). Perhaps if there were some Inspectors General they could conduct verification inspections at each installation ensure policy compliance.

I wonder who is the Lieutenant Colonel "Big Brother" who will be checking things out. He will be a very powerful person.

Excerpts:

Meanwhile, “validation teams” are now being dispatched to military bases to ensure that troops are complying with Hegseth’s directive, according to one official and a statement from the Air Force. Multiple officials also confirmed to CNN that a lieutenant colonel has been dispatched from the Pentagon to travel to every combatant command around the world, holding meetings with staff and ensuring compliance with the policy.

The lack of guidance and the pressure from above to comply has led to a massive “overcorrection” and the removal of thousands of articles and images that were either completely unrelated to DEI issues – like Holocaust remembrance, suicide prevention and the Enola Gay aircraft – or that commemorated war heroes like World War II Medal of Honor recipient Pfc. Harold Gonsalves and historically significant service members like Jackie Robinson and the Navajo code-talkers.

Military was instructed to search keywords including ‘first’ and ‘history’ during rushed purge of Pentagon websites | CNN Politics

CNN · by Natasha Bertrand, Haley Britzky, Oren Liebermann · March 20, 2025

United States Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks during a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact group at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2025.

Omar Havana/AP

CNN —

Airman 1st Class Briana Cespedes/US Air Force

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a video posted to X on Thursday that the effort “was an arduous – but incredibly important – undertaking,” with an “aggressive timeline.”

One defense official said of the removal of “firsts” in the military, “That’s just history. It’s not really DEI – it’s literally just history.”

Multiple units had to ask for extensions on the deadline because of the amount of content they were combing through in a short period of time, three officials said.

Another of the officials said they had to bring in a few other people to their team to help complete it in time, pulling them away from other tasks.

This image provided by the US Marine Corps shows World War II Medal of Honor recipient Pfc. Harold Gonsalves during World War II.

US Marine Corps/AP

CNN · by Natasha Bertrand, Haley Britzky, Oren Liebermann · March 20, 2025

12. Hegseth says he’ll meet with Musk at Pentagon to discuss ‘efficiencies’

Damage control after the NY Times and Wall Street Journal reports? Or did both those newspapers print "fake news?" (oh how I hate wiring those words and falling into the social media pool of hate).

Hegseth says he’ll meet with Musk at Pentagon to discuss ‘efficiencies’

Stars and Stripes · by • · March 21, 2025

Associated Press

Defense Secretary Pete Hesgeth talks with reporters in Stuttgart, Germany, on Feb. 11, 2025. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said late Thursday that he would be meeting with billionaire Elon Musk at the Pentagon on Friday to discuss “innovation, efficiencies & smarter production.”

Musk, a top adviser to President Donald Trump, and his Department of Government Efficiency have played an integral role in the administration’s push to dramatically reduce the size of the government. Musk has faced intense blowback from some lawmakers and voters for his chainsaw-wielding approach to laying off workers and slashing programs, although Trump’s supporters have hailed it.

A senior defense official told reporters Tuesday that roughly 50,000 to 60,000 civilian jobs will be cut in the Defense Department.

In a post on Musk’s X platform, Hegseth emphasized that “this is NOT a meeting about ‘top secret China war plans,’ ” denying a story published by The New York Times late Thursday.

Hegseth is also scheduled to deliver remarks with Trump at the White House on Friday morning.

13. Pentagon spokesman sidelined after uproar over Jackie Robinson article

Excerpts:

The removal of Ullyot, who served as Pentagon press secretary, follows the arrival last month of another spokesman, Sean Parnell, who has known Hegseth for years and has his trust, defense officials said. Ullyot had taken on a behind-the-scenes role in the department while Parnell has begun holding on-camera media briefings.

On Thursday, Parnell posted a video on X in which he said the screening of Defense Department content for DEI messaging was “an incredibly important undertaking,” but acknowledged mistakes were made in part due to the use of artificial intelligence.

“Some important content was incorrectly pulled offline to be reviewed,” Parnell said in the video. “We want to be very, very clear. History is not DEI. When content is either mistakenly removed, or if it’s maliciously removed, we continue to work quickly to restore it.”

Several defense officials who worked with Ullyot said that even before the blowback caused by Wednesday’s statement, concern was growing among colleagues across the Defense Department who were troubled by his judgment.

Within days of Trump’s inauguration, Ullyot ousted numerous independent news organizations from their permanent desks or television booths at the Pentagon, portraying the move as a new “rotation program” and replacing them primarily with right-leaning media outlets with a record of defending the president. After news organizations protested the decision, Ullyot announced an expansion of the rotation program and took away the workspaces used for years by several more outlets, including The Washington Post.

Pentagon spokesman sidelined after uproar over Jackie Robinson article

Stars and Stripes · by Dan Lamothe · March 21, 2025

Defense Department spokesman John Ullyot. (U.S. Deptartment of Veterans Affairs)

The Trump administration has sidelined a senior Defense Department spokesman, defense officials said Thursday, ending a brief and tumultuous tenure in which he clashed with colleagues and journalists who cover the Pentagon and aggressively defended the agency’s purge of government-produced content recognizing the contributions of minorities in the military.

John Ullyot, a public affairs official who also held senior communications roles during President Donald Trump’s first term in office, is expected to take another role within the Defense Department working on “special projects,” said a person familiar with the matter who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive personnel decision. Ullyot declined to comment.

Ullyot’s removal followed an uproar Wednesday over the Pentagon’s removal of an online article about the military background of Jackie Robinson, who became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball in 1947 after serving in the U.S. Army. As news of the article’s removal drew widespread condemnation on social media, Ullyot released a statement attempting to explain the administration’s rationale — striking an unusually combative tone for a spokesman representing the view of a government agency with a nonpartisan national security mission.

“Discriminatory Equity Ideology,” his statement said in part, “… Divides the force, Erodes unit cohesion and Interferes with the services’ core warfighting mission.”

Since returning to office, Trump and the political appointees he’s positioned throughout the federal government, have worked vigorously to end initiatives that promote diversity, equity and inclusion within the workforce and to scrub from government websites and social media accounts most references to those terms. The Pentagon issued its order last month, days after Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired several senior military leaders they deemed overly focused on diversity.

Ullyot’s statement did not address whether the removal of Defense Department articles about Robinson and other minority trailblazers was done in error, but he wrote that if any material was removed “either deliberately or by mistake” that exceeded the scope of the directive, corrections would be made to ensure that the Pentagon “recognizes our heroes for their dedicated service alongside their fellow Americans, period.”

The removal of Ullyot, who served as Pentagon press secretary, follows the arrival last month of another spokesman, Sean Parnell, who has known Hegseth for years and has his trust, defense officials said. Ullyot had taken on a behind-the-scenes role in the department while Parnell has begun holding on-camera media briefings.

On Thursday, Parnell posted a video on X in which he said the screening of Defense Department content for DEI messaging was “an incredibly important undertaking,” but acknowledged mistakes were made in part due to the use of artificial intelligence.

“Some important content was incorrectly pulled offline to be reviewed,” Parnell said in the video. “We want to be very, very clear. History is not DEI. When content is either mistakenly removed, or if it’s maliciously removed, we continue to work quickly to restore it.”

Several defense officials who worked with Ullyot said that even before the blowback caused by Wednesday’s statement, concern was growing among colleagues across the Defense Department who were troubled by his judgment.

Within days of Trump’s inauguration, Ullyot ousted numerous independent news organizations from their permanent desks or television booths at the Pentagon, portraying the move as a new “rotation program” and replacing them primarily with right-leaning media outlets with a record of defending the president. After news organizations protested the decision, Ullyot announced an expansion of the rotation program and took away the workspaces used for years by several more outlets, including The Washington Post.

The Jackie Robinson article was restored on the Defense Department website later Wednesday, but the reversal did little to quell the furor. On Thursday morning, ESPN television personality Stephen A. Smith took up the issue, saying he does not think the article was removed in error and that it follows what he called a pattern of the president’s supporters ignoring why DEI efforts existed in the first place.

Smith, who is Black, said on ESPN’s “First Take” that the administration is “going about the business of trying to scrub history” to the point that even Robinson is targeted. Smith noted that Robinson was drafted into military service in 1942, court-martialed in 1944 for refusing an order from a superior officer to move to the back of a bus, and honorably discharged from the Army.

Smith said on ESPN that Trump deserves to be treated with respect as the president but needs to be “called to the carpet” when decisions like this are made. Smith challenged Trump, Vice President JD Vance or Hegseth to defend the decision-making in an interview on his program.

Stars and Stripes · by Dan Lamothe · March 21, 2025

14. Who is Ronald Johnson, Trump's pick for Mexican ambassador?

Will he have to conduct a lot of damage control over the release of the JFK assassination file and information about Mexico in them?

He will certainly have his hands full with operations against the cartels, illegal immigration, tariffs, and fentanyl, among other issues.

Who is Ronald Johnson, Trump's pick for Mexican ambassador?

mexiconewsdaily.com · by MND Staff · March 19, 2025

The news that Donald Trump has appointed veteran Ronald Johnson to Mexico marks a sea change in the way the United States is looking to deal with it’s southern neighbour. What should Mexicans expect from the new appointee in the coming years, asks María Meléndez?

Best known for his military and intelligence experience, Johnson is a former Green Beret and a veteran who specialized in unconventional warfare, counterinsurgency, and counterterrorism operations. After his military service, Johnson joined the CIA, where he dedicated over twenty years to intelligence operations in Latin America. His assignments involved disrupting drug trafficking networks and combating transnational organized crime.

Who is new U.S. Ambassador Ronald Johnson?

Under the previous Trump administration, Johnson worked as the U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, where he worked closely with strongman leader Nayib Bukele to counter gang violence, human trafficking and illegal migration in the beleaguered Central American nation. Critics, however, point to Johnson’s policies as fundamentally flawed and failing to deal with the the root causes of crime and instability.

Johnson’s appointment represents a significant change in U.S. diplomatic representation in Mexico. His background suggests a shift toward a greater focus on security collaboration between the two countries, rather than a a more traditional emphasis on political issues and cross-border trade.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has expressed her desire to maintain a cooperative relationship with the new ambassador, though, despite rhetoric around the use of U.S. drone warfare against targets in the country. The threat of unilateral action has also seen her underline the importance of respecting Mexico and its sovereignty.

Mexico News Daily

mexiconewsdaily.com · by MND Staff · March 19, 2025

15. Is Russia behind Heathrow Airport closure?

A long read and a lot of reporting so quickly after the incident (or attack?)

Is Russia behind Heathrow Airport closure?

Counter terrorism police probe Heathrow fire amid claims of Russian sabotage: Substation blaze fits the pattern of Putin's disruption attacks in Europe, and exposes 'vulnerability' in UK infrastructure, say experts

By MARK DUELL and ELENA SALVONI and JAMES TAPSFIELD and WILL STEWART

Published: 05:25 EDT, 21 March 2025 | Updated: 08:24 EDT, 21 March 2025

Daily Mail · by MARK DUELL · March 21, 2025

Counter terrorism police are now leading the proibe into an electrical substation fire that has shut London Heathrow Airport for the whole of today amid claims it could be a Russian sabotage attack linked to Vladimir Putin's campaign of disruption.

More than 1,300 flights to and from the UK's busiest airport will be impacted today due to its closure following a fire at the nearby North Hyde electrical substation.

Thousands of homes were left without power with more than 100 people evacuated after a transformer at the substation caught fire as a huge explosion was heard.

Western officials have accused Russia and its proxies of staging dozens of attacks and other incidents across Europe since the invasion of Ukraine three years ago.

They allege that the disruption campaign is an extension of President Putin's war, intended to sow division in European societies and undermine support for Ukraine - although the Kremlin has denied carrying out sabotage efforts against the West.

Earlier this week, Putin had agreed to a limited ceasefire that stops Russia targeting Ukraine's energy infrastructure after a phone call with US President Donald Trump.

Now, experts are analysing whether Russia could be linked to the UK substation fire, which is affecting 679 flights scheduled to land and 678 departures from Heathrow.

Scotland Yard's Counter Terrorism Command is leading the investigation given the need to quickly establish whether sabotage was involved and the pressing security questions relating to how a single fire took down a major piece of infrastructure.

This map shows disruption incidents Western officials have blamed on Russia and its proxies

A transformer within the North Hyde electrical substation in West London caught fire last night

Firefighters continue to exinguish the blaze at North Hyde electricity substation this morning

Parked planes and an empty runway at London Heathrow Terminal 5 today after it was closed

It comes after Russian spies sent a package of electric sex toys to western Europe before concealing incendiary devices ignited in UK and German DHL depots last July in what was alleged to have been a test run for a potential US-bound flight attack.

Reacting to the Heathrow fire today, security expert Will Geddes, director and founder of the International Corporate Protection Group, told MailOnline: 'Heathrow has been looking at expanding - this isn't a great advert for their ability to do so safely.

LIVE

Gatwick, Stansted and Luton flight info as Heathrow closed all day: Live updates

'If I was a foreign hostile party and I wanted to disrupt one of the busiest airports in the world, cause international embarrassment, create many, many question marks, I would target something like a substation.

'The Russians are looking at everything. They're looking at our fibre optics under the sea, they're looking at our nuclear power stations, we know hostile reconnaissance is going on right now.

'So for this to be taken down so easily and cause such an impact, one has got to say if I was Russia, that's where I would focus my attentions as well.'

He said the incident had the potential to be a similar act of sabotage to the fires on railway tracks in France ahead of the Paris Olympics in July.

Mr Geddes continued: 'If anybody did this it would either be down to some serious reconnaissance in advance to determine that this was a massive vulnerability.

Passengers are facing travel chaos today after Heathrow Airport had to close due to a fire

Departure boards and other screens are dark in parts of London Heathrow Airport this morning

An almost empty Arrivals Hall at Heathrow Terminal 4 in London this morning after its closure

'They would have had to determine what leaning and what depth of responsibility and sort of impact would this substation have not only obviously on the local homes, but also on Heathrow Airport itself.

'Or you've got the easier, simpler answer that these guys have fallen asleep and they have not battle readied this substation for any type of eventuality of potential power outs, fires or anything like that.

All the clues that Putin is behind the Heathrow fire: Intelligence expert NEIL BARNETT

'Where is the fire suppression system, why has that not worked? Is that because it's faulty or because it has been tampered with?'

He said Russia and other hostile states would be glad to see the chaos it has caused 'and it's not outside the scope of a foreign hostile state to attack a substation or a power or utility supply to a key site.'

Bob Seely, a Russia expert and former Conservative MP, told MailOnline that the chaos at Heathrow was at least a 'warning' about the threat of sabotage.

He said: 'This has exposed a massive security vulnerability. If a substation fire can shut down one of the world's largest airports and Britain's busiest airport, it shows a dangerous lack of resilience.

'We should be building resilience into our critical national infrastructure, especially given the rise in Russian sabotage operations in Europe as well as the threat of home-grown terrorism or extremist protests designed to bring modern life to a halt.'

Dr Seely, whose new book 'New Total War' is out this summer, added: 'Until we see different, this was very likely to have been an accident, but it is also a warning to us.

Firefighters continue to exinguish the blaze at North Hyde electricity substation this morning

Planes remain parked on the tarmac at London Heathrow today as the airport remains closed

An empty Terminal 4 arrivals hall at Heathrow Airport in London today amid the power outage

'We need to design in and build in greater resilience in our critical national infrastructure.'

Sky News security and defence editor Deborah Haynes said: 'Folk who track Russia's campaign of unconventional warfare in Europe will likely wake up wondering if the fire that cut power to Heathrow was an accident or something sinister.

DAN HODGES: The Heathrow fire proves what we all suspected: Labour doesn't have a clue

'Understanding how or why the fire at a substation started will of course be key. Either way… this does really rather highlight the vulnerability of a piece of national infrastructure as critical as our largest and most important civilian airport.'

And Professor Lucy Easthope, an adviser on disaster response and recovery, and author of 'When the Dust Settles', added: 'It actually does not matter whether it was a Bic lighter and pile of newspapers or a deliberate attack.

'Either shows up the current vulnerability of national infrastructure, civil defence - I use that term deliberately - and the resourcing of response and readiness.'

It comes after Richard Gaisford, chief correspondent for ITV's Good Morning Britain, said: 'Heathrow Airport is a key piece of UK national infrastructure.

'Now brought to a standstill by a fire outside of its well protected boundaries, that creates chaos around the world. Security services must be considering sabotage.'

A fire caused by a suspected Russian incendiary device at a DHL depot in Birmingham last July

A thermal power plant damaged by a Russian rocket attack in Ukraine in May 2024

A bus on fire by a hydroelectric power station after Russian attacks in Dnipro in March 2024

A man cycles past an electricity facility after a Russian attack in Kharkiv in March 2024

And Nick Ferrari asked on his LBC radio breakfast show: 'Anybody know where Vladimir Putin was last night wandering around with a can of unleaded?'

Paul Charles, CEO of travel consultancy The PC Agency, estimated that the cost of the impact to the global aviation system could total around £20million a day, with no guarantee that Heathrow will reopen on Saturday.

BREAKING NEWS

Flight chaos across the world with planes forced to divert or turn around as Heathrow Airport shuts

Meanwhile former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev tweeted: 'I'm looking forward to Russia being blamed for the Heathrow fire. What are you waiting for, Starmer?'

And Russian trolls on social media claimed the Heathrow fire could have been a Putin sabotage operation.

One post on Kremlin-funded Readovka Telegram channel declared: 'Petrov and Boshirov came to see the cathedral again.'

Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov - real names Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin - were the notorious suspects in the Novichok poisonings of double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury in 2018.

The GRU military intelligence officers, who posed as tourists visiting Salisbury Cathedral, are both wanted in Britain for murder and attempted murder.

But they have since been claimed to be spearheading a major Russian operation to sabotage Western countries.

Another comment said: 'Are Petrov and Boshirov on vacation?' And a third wrote: 'Now Petrov and Boshirov went to see Big Ben. The excursion was a success.'

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the Security Council via a video link in Moscow today

President Vladimir Putin enters a hall for the Security Council meeting at the Kremlin today

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the Security Council today

A fourth said: 'Thus [with this fire] Putin is trying to break the will of the British people to help their Ukrainian brothers for free.'

And a fifth added said: 'Are they going to look for a 'Russian trace' again?'

Evacuated residents living near Heathrow tell of moment 'houses shook' as fire engulfed substation

Back in the UK, the chairwoman of the Commons transport committee said it was 'speculative' to suggest at the moment that something sinister caused the Heathrow fire.

Asked by Times Radio if she thought the fire may have been caused intentionally, Labour MP Ruth Cadbury replied: 'I think that's somewhat speculative.

'There are obviously questions about it, and I don't know enough about electricity, but for the airport to be dependent on one substation, it does raise questions.'

She added it was 'very, very concerning' that 'one substation can close down an airport and there isn't an alternative source of energy'.

Meanwhile Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said the Government was doing everything it could to restore power to Heathrow.

He was asked by Sky News whether a Cobra meeting of senior ministers would be convened to address the matter.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks as he visits Northwood military headquarters in North West London yesterday to meet planners mapping out next steps in the 'Coalition of the Willing'

Mr Miliband replied: 'I'm sure the Government will be convening in the most appropriate way. I'm not going to anticipate the precise form of that, but I'm already in touch with my colleagues on this issue.

'As I say, I've spoken to the National Grid, who are really at the epicentre of this, and we will be doing everything we can, both to restore power and help the National Grid.

EXCLUSIVE

Passengers stuck abroad as Heathrow Airport closure sends travel plans across world into meltdown

'To do that, and to ensure that the DfT (Department for Transport), and the Government as a whole, plays its part in, as best we can, minimising the disruption to passengers.'

Speaking to the BBC, Mr Miliband said the fire was 'an unprecedented event' and 'we will have to look hard' at 'resilience' for major institutions such as the airport.

He told Radio 4's Today programme: 'I spoke to the National Grid this morning. There's obviously been a catastrophic fire at this substation, an unprecedented event actually in their experience.

'It appears to have knocked out a back-up generator as well as the substation itself. What I know is that they are working as hard as they can to restore power as well as the fire being put out.

'It's too early to say what caused this but I think obviously we will have to look hard at the causes and also the protection and the resilience that is in place for major institutions like Heathrow. With any event like this we'll have to both understand its causes and learn lessons from it.'

Aviation consultant John van Hoogstraten said the airport should have been able to rely on its own diesel generators and alternate power cables from the National Grid.

SNCF staff and French police inspect the scene of a suspected attack on the high speed rail network at Croiselles on July 26 last year, hours before the Olympic Games opening ceremony

Passengers queuing at the Gare Du Nord train station in Paris after 'malicious acts' severely disrupted travel across France on the day of the opening ceremony for the 2024 Olympics

He added that that the apparent failure to provide back-up power pointed to a lack of testing of 'business continuity' plans.

Mr van Hoogstraten of Straten Consulting Services said that airports should ideally have separate power cables attached to the grid with one acting as 'a redundancy network' to be used in the event of a failure of the main supply.

Full list of Heathrow Airport flights cancelled following fire

He told MailOnline: 'Unfortunately a lot of the times, the cables end up coming from the same sub-station and if you have a sub-station failure, then your redundancy line fails as well.

'I have seen that so many times in architectural drawings in planning stages where you have a separate line, which goes to the same substation.'

Mr van Hoogsraten said he believed Heathrow would also have had six or seven diesel generator plants spread over different sites to provide power for each terminal, air traffic control and auxiliary services.

He said: 'Normally the redundancy systems are large diesel engines situated somewhere within airport buildings. The switch over protocol is normally within three seconds. You notice a flick of the lights when they switch on and that is about t.

'They will run primary power around the airport facility. They should have multiple generators on site. Each terminal should have its own generators. They are massive and the size of large shipping containers.

An anchor presumed to belong to the Eagle S tanker on HMS Belos off Porkkalanniemi after it was recovered from the Gulf of Finland in January. The Swedish navy said that month that it had recovered from the Baltic Sea the anchor of the oil tanker suspected of belonging to Russia's 'shadow fleet' and damaging four underwater telecom cables and one power cable

A woman holds a portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sevastopol earlier this week

'They can run a substantial amount of electricity and can go on for as long as you put in diesel with a tank normally lasting 24 hours.

'I was a little bit surprised when I heard that it was an off-site issue at a sub-station which caused the whole airport to close. That is quite significant that the internal systems failed to pick up the load.

'The first question to ask is what testing protocol do they have for their back-up systems. It would appear that the testing protocols were not sufficient. Maybe they test every 12 months? Should they be doing it every 30 to 60 days? These are the questions that need to be asked.

'The difficulty in business continuity is trying to predict what could go wrong. A power failure is one of the prime things you should look at.'

He added: 'To shut a whole airport for an entire day due to a fire at a substation tells of a significant failure of a business continuity plan. Business continuity is great as a paper plan but it rarely gets tested in earnest. Unfortunately on days like today it does get tested and it is found to fail

'Whilst they may have all the backups in place, they need a mechanism to test it enough. But testing is a cost impact to the business so this is where business continuity tends to fall apart.'

Speaking about when disruption could end, Mr van Hoogstraten also said: 'It is the whole domino effect of flights catching up. It's going to take a minimum of a week to catch up and that's being optimistic.'

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: 'We are working with the London Fire Brigade to establish the cause of the fire which remains under investigation.

'While there is currently no indication of foul play we retain an open mind at this time. Given the location of the substation and the impact this incident has had on critical national infrastructure, the Met's Counter Terrorism Command is now leading enquiries.

'This is due to the specialist resources and capabilities within that command that can assist in progressing this investigation at pace to minimise disruption and identify the cause.'

A Heathrow spokesperson said: 'Heathrow is experiencing a significant power outage across the airport due to a large fire at a nearby electrical substation. Whilst fire crews are responding to the incident, we do not have clarity on when power may be reliably restored.

'To maintain the safety of our passengers and colleagues, we have no choice but to close Heathrow until 11.59pm on March 21, 2025. We expect significant disruption over the coming days and passengers should not travel to the airport under any circumstances until the airport reopens.

'We will provide an update when more information on the resumption of operations is available. We know this will be disappointing for passengers and we want to reassure that we are working as hard as possible to resolve the situation.'

This is believed to be the worse disruption at Heathrow since December 18-23 2010, when thousands of Christmas getaway passengers camped in the terminals because of widespread cancellations caused by snow.

An inquiry found the clearing of aircraft stands was slower than required.

In April of that year, air travel was grounded across Europe because of an ash cloud caused by an Icelandic volcanic eruption.

A system failure suffered by air traffic control provider Nats in August 2023 led to flights being cancelled across the UK for several hours.

Online tracking services showed flights being diverted to Gatwick, Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris and Ireland's Shannon Airport. A number of flights were also turned around and returned to airports in Canada and the United States.

Gatwick Airport accepted seven diverted flights from locations including Singapore, Johannesburg, Lagos, Cape Town and Doha which were originally destined for Heathrow.

Workers clean up this morning after Russian drones hit shops in an attack on Odesa in Ukraine

Shannon Airport in Co Clare accepted six diversions from Toronto, Atlanta, Bridgetown Barbados, Boston, Orlando and Newark.

Aviation consultant John Strickland said the closure of Heathrow for an entire day is 'a massive dislocation to have to recover from'.

He added: 'Once an aircraft is in the wrong place with the crew, if you're away from home you don't have another crew to suddenly bring the plane and the passengers back.

'You've got to wait until that crew has taken its rest, which is always required after a duty period.

'We're talking about several days worth of disruption to get the planes recovered and start using them again to move planned and disrupted passengers.'

He likened the disruption to what happened after the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, when flights were grounded across the US. He said: 'It's a contained version of 9/11'.

Mr Strickland also said the cost for the aviation industry will 'run into millions', adding: 'You can't quantify it yet.'

Rory Boland, editor of magazine Which? Travel, said affected passengers are not entitled to compensation but airlines should provide assistance such as overnight accommodation if required and re-routing bookings, including with rival carriers from alternative airports.

Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks said there was a large-scale power outage in Hayes, Hounslow and the surrounding areas impacting more than 16,300 homes.

According to the power company's website, authorities aimed to restore power by 3pm today.

A National Grid spokesperson said the fire had damaged equipment and they were 'working at speed to restore power supplies as quickly as possible'.

London Fire Brigade said 10 fire engines and around 70 firefighters were still on the scene at Nestles Avenue in Hayes just before 6am with part of a transformer still alight.

Around 150 people have been evacuated from surrounding properties and a 200-metre cordon was been put in place as a precaution.

Assistant commissioner Pat Goulbourne said at around 8am that the fire was 'under control'.

He said: 'This was a very visible and significant incident, and our firefighters worked tirelessly in challenging conditions to bring the fire under control as swiftly as possible.

'Thanks to their efforts and co-ordinated multi-agency response, we successfully contained the fire and prevented further spread.

'We will maintain a presence at the scene throughout the day, assisting the National Grid as they assess the site.'

A local resident, who did not want to be named, said she heard a 'massive explosion' just before midnight.

All the power went off, she said, adding: 'It just smelled like burning.'

Firefighters led 29 people from surrounding properties to safety.

London Ambulance Service said there were no casualties at the scene of the fire.

Footage posted to social media showed huge flames and large plumes of smoke coming from the facility.

Officials from Finland have accused Russia and Belarus of directing migrants to their borders. Pictured: Migrants arrive at the border crossing between Finland and Russia, in Salla, in 2023

The brigade said nearly 200 calls had been received in relation to the incident with crews from Hayes, Heathrow, Hillingdon, Southall and surrounding areas on the scene.

Emergency services were called to the scene at 11.23pm last night. The cause of the fire is yet to be determined.

The fire came after the Associated Press documented 59 incidents in which European governments, prosecutors, intelligence services or other Western officials blamed Russia, groups linked to Russia or its ally Belarus for cyberattacks, spreading propaganda, plotting killings or committing acts of vandalism, arson, sabotage or espionage since the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

The incidents range from stuffing car exhausts with expanding foam in Germany to a plot to plant explosives on cargo planes.

They include setting fire to stores and a museum; hacking that targeted politicians and critical infrastructure; and spying by a ring convicted in the UK.

Richard Moore, the head of Britain's foreign intelligence service MI6, called it a 'staggeringly reckless campaign' in November.

Proving Russia's involvement in any incidents can be difficult, and the Kremlin has denied carrying out a sabotage campaign against the West - but more governments are publicly attributing attacks to Russia.

The alleged disruption has a double purpose, according to James Appathurai, the Nato official responsible for the alliance's response to such threats.

One is to create 'political disquiet' and undermine citizens' support for their governments and the other is to 'undercut support for Ukraine,' said Mr Appathurai, deputy assistant secretary-general for Innovation, Hybrid, and Cyber.

During its investigation, the AP spoke to 15 current officials, including two prime ministers, and officials from five European intelligence services, three defence ministries and Nato, in addition to experts.

Experts say the scope of the campaign is particularly worrying at a time when US support for Ukraine is wavering and European allies are questioning Washington's reliability as a security partner and ally.

The cases are varied, and the largest concentrations are in countries that are major supporters of Ukraine.

Some incidents had the potential for catastrophic consequences, including mass casualties, as when packages exploded at shipping facilities in Germany and the UK Western officials said they suspected the packages were part of a broader plot by Russian intelligence to put bombs on cargo planes headed to the US and Canada.

In another case, Western intelligence agencies uncovered what they said was a Russian plot to kill the head of a major German arms manufacturer that is a supplier of weapons to Ukraine.

European authorities are investigating several cases of damage to infrastructure under the Baltic Sea, including to a power cable linking Estonia and Finland.

A photo taken from a Russian Defense Ministry Press Service video released this week shows a Russian 'Grad' self-propelled multiple rocket launcher fires towards Ukrainian positions

Finnish authorities detained a ship, suspected of being part of Russia's 'shadow fleet' used to avoid sanctions, after that cable and others were damaged.

When a fake French Defence Ministry website claimed citizens were being called up to fight in Ukraine, a French minister denounced it as Russian disinformation.

What are your flight rights? Your questions answered amid Heathrow travel chaos

German authorities suspect Russia was behind a campaign to block up scores of car exhausts ahead of national elections, according to a European intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Officials from Estonia, Poland, Latvia and Finland, meanwhile, have accused Russia and Belarus of directing migrants to their borders.

Putin's spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told the AP that the Kremlin has never been shown 'any proofs' supporting the accusations and said 'certainly we definitely reject any allegations.'

The AP scoured through hundreds of incidents suspected to be linked to Russia since Moscow's invasion that were reported in open sources such as local media and government websites.

They were included in the AP's tally only when officials drew a clear link to Russia, pro-Russian groups or ally Belarus.

Most of the accusations were made to or reported by the AP, either at the time they occurred or during the course of this investigation. Fourteen cases were reported by other news organizations and attributed to named officials.

Ukrainian firefighters put out a blaze this morning following a Russian attack in Odesa

In about a quarter of the cases, prosecutors have brought charges or courts have convicted people of carrying out the sabotage. But in many more, no specific culprit has been publicly identified or brought to justice.

Countries have always spied on their enemies and long waged propaganda campaigns to further their interests abroad.

BREAKING NEWS

Fury as Heathrow's lack of back-up power causes 'a contained version of 9/11'

But since the invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has become 'bolder,' hitting the West with sabotage, vandalism and arson in addition to the tactics it previously used, including killings and cyberattacks, said Elisabeth Braw, an expert on the attacks at the Atlantic Council in Washington.

'The way you can weaken a country today is not by invading it,' she said.

China has also been accused of espionage and cyber operations in Europe, and The Wall Street Journal reported that Ukrainian authorities were responsible for blowing up the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in 2022. Kyiv has denied this.

'Multiple countries engage in hybrid operations,' said David Salvo, managing director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund. 'Russia is the overwhelming culprit in Europe.'

A coordinated approach - especially sharing intelligence - is critical to tracking and countering the threats, Mr Appathurai said.

Firefighters at a damaged building after a Russian strike in Kostiantynivka earlier this month

That cooperation - never easy since intelligence is not shared collectively across Nato members - faces new challenges now, as the Trump administration increasingly questions the role of the alliance, embraces Russia and spars with its European partners.

Still, as the scale of the campaign becomes clearer, some nations are becoming more assertive.

Passengers furious as hotel prices surge by up to £946 amid Heathrow Airport meltdown

Mr Appathurai pointed to the approach to suspected sabotage in the Baltic Sea, where Nato has launched a mission to protect critical infrastructure.

'If we are to have a chance of stemming the threat,' Ms Braw said, 'then we have to work together.'

Meanwhile, Mr Miliband said today that Sir Keir Starmer is not moving away from the idea of placing British ground forces in Ukraine as part of a future peacekeeping deal.

The Prime Minister said yesterday that the so-called 'coalition of the willing' was dividing its planning efforts between air, sea, land and borders, and regenerating Ukraine.

He did not explicitly repeat his previous commitment to put boots on the ground in Ukraine, leading some to speculate Sir Keir was shifting the emphasis of the mission.

But Mr Miliband signalled this was not the case. 'I think people are over-interpreting what the Prime Minister said yesterday,' he told Sky News.

Estonian naval ships sail in the Baltic Sea in January, as part of stepped-up Nato patrols in the region following suspected sabotage of undersea cables

The senior Cabinet minister added: 'Look, I think work is obviously ongoing on the terms of a ceasefire and the protection that will be put in place to protect that ceasefire and to protect the people of Ukraine. That operational planning, that military planning, is ongoing.

'You wouldn't expect me to get into the detail of that but I don't think people should jump to conclusions.

Richard Tice claims Heathrow shutdown was 'caused by drive for Net Zero'

'That planning is an ongoing process and obviously is one going on in concert with our allies, and indeed in concert with Ukraine and the government of Ukraine.'

Yesterday, Sir Keir met planners from 31 allied countries at Northwood military headquarters in North West London, to firm up proposals for the so-called coalition of the willing to help enforce any peace agreement.

European and Commonwealth nations have signed up to the allied effort, which would aim to deter Russia from breaking a ceasefire.

After the meeting, Sir Keir warned that Moscow would face 'severe consequences' if it breached any peace deal with Kyiv amid ongoing diplomatic efforts to secure a truce to end the war.

As Britain and its allies square up to Russia, Defence Secretary John Healey meanwhile told The Times that Britain could do 'untold damage' to adversaries with its nuclear deterrent.

Mugshots released by the Metropolitan Police show (from left) Katrin Ivanova, Vanya Gaberova and Tihomir Ivanchev, who were convicted in the UK of spying for Russia

Calls this week between Mr Trump, Mr Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have failed to produce the 30-day ceasefire envisaged by the White House.

Instead, the Russian leader agreed to a suspension of attacks on energy infrastructure, although Ukraine has said other civilian targets including a hospital have since been struck.

Mr Zelensky said he believes a 'lasting peace can be achieved this year' after he spoke on the phone with Mr Trump on Tuesday.

In the same call, the US leader suggested that Washington takes ownership of Ukrainian power plants to ensure their security, though his Ukrainian counterpart later said this would only relate to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in south-east Ukraine.

Further peace talks are due to take place in Saudi Arabia over the weekend, with delegations from Kyiv and Moscow expected to meet US officials.

Daily Mail · by MARK DUELL · March 21, 2025

16. WTF is Wrong with Russia?

Some things to consider:

A Russian soldier fighting in Ukraine receives over $2,000 a month. Meanwhile, an average monthly salary in Russia is $600.

In the 1980s, the Soviets fought a long war in Afghanistan. They didn't win. A total of 625,000 Soviet soldiers went through Afghanistan. Immediately after the war's end, crime rates and drug abuse have drastically increased. Those injured and those with PTSD were not able to find themselves back home. The state didn't care, and the war veterans became critical of the government, adding another brick to the country's downfall.

If Russia doesn't outright win the war, the war veterans and the ultra-nationalists would likely become the new opposition, accusing the government of not finishing the job.

Former convicts, freed from prosecution after going to Ukraine to kill people for money, would now also be back home. That might cause more problems for the state.

Even now, when the war is far from over, the social tension is high. Soldiers who return home are committing crimes, and the state is turning a blind eye on such cases so as not to create a rift between the official propaganda, which portrays soldiers as heroes protecting the fatherland, and reality, where those who committed murders in the past commit them again.

A few horrendous examples from the previous months include men who raped and murdered women being pardoned and sent to the front line, and an ultra-nationalist soldier who was accused of molesting a child yet escaped prosecution by returning to the barracks.

In a totalitarian state, where everything must be under complete control and where no public discontent is allowed, it would be tough to maintain order.

WTF is Wrong with Russia?

https://mailchi.mp/kyivindependent/wtf-is-wrong-russia?e=f0a5d27f46

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Thursday, March 20, 2025

Oleksiy Sorokin

Deputy Chief Editor

The past few weeks were… well, weird. There was a flurry of phone calls, meetings, loud statements from the Kremlin and the White House, and absolutely nothing had actually changed on the battlefield.

Moscow continues to bombard Ukraine with drones — and Kyiv fires back, hitting the Engels-2 air base, nearly 700 kilometers east of the border.

It doesn't seem right now that the war is to end anytime soon. But what if it did, if the war suddenly ended, what would Russia look like? What would change for the people inside the country?

Hi, my name is Oleksiy Sorokin, I'm the deputy chief editor of the Kyiv Independent, and this is the latest issue of our Russia-themed newsletter.

Today, let's discuss what Russia might look like after the war is over.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin speaks during a press conference following a meeting with his Belarusian counterpart at the Kremlin in Moscow on March 13, 2025. (Maxim Shemetov/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

It is hard to predict how Russia's all-out war in Ukraine would end. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been vocal in his desire to keep all the occupied territories and demand additional concessions from Kyiv and Washington.

In a closed-door meeting with the Russian business elite hours before his call with Donald Trump on March 18, Putin spoke little about the economy and business climate, focusing on the war that takes much of his attention.

Russia's Kommersant newspaper reported citing its sources that Putin said he desires for Kyiv to officially acknowledge the Russian-occupied territories, which account for 20% of Ukraine, as Russian. In the same meeting, according to Kommersant, Putin spoke positively of Trump, saying that "it's possible to deal with him."

Russian news outlet Faridaily reported citing its sources that Putin told businesspeople behind closed doors that peace won't be achieved anytime soon and even if it will, "nothing will be like it used to be (prior to the all-out war)."

If Putin actually said that, then for the first time in my life, I can say that I agree with him — Russia, after the all-out war, won't resemble the country it used to be.

There are a number of distinctions between Russia in 2021 and Russia in 2025.

The primary one is the political system — it went from authoritarian to totalitarian.

Such a transition is permanent, the so-called "dictator's dilemma" or the "authoritarian spiral." No examples come to mind of a country decreasing the level of terror without a change of leadership.

A totalitarian regime has a few distinct features — intolerance to any form of dissent or public dissatisfaction, complete control over the public and private sphere, mass surveillance, propaganda, and the tolerance of using force and state-sponsored repressions against everyone.

A cult of personality is also a distinct feature of such regimes.

Even before the all-out war, Russia wasn't a comfortable or safe place to live in. The state was eager to jail or kill its opponents — Anna Politkovskaya in 2006, Boris Nemtsov in 2015, Alexei Navalny barely survived a poisoning with Novichok nerve agent in 2020.

The difference, however, is that authoritarian regimes are usually selective in who they attempt to jail and kill. If you are an ordinary factory worker who doesn't express political opinions in public and lives a simple and discreet life, the chances are high that the authoritarian regime would not take your life. Totalitarian regimes persecute people en masse.

In contemporary Russia, calling the all-out war against Ukraine "war" instead of the officially approved "special military operation" violates the law and will lead to a person being charged with "discrediting the Russian army."

Despite that, Russian officials regularly label the attack on Ukraine as “war” and receive no penalty for it.

People in Russia are repressed for things like liking a social media post, or supporting an organization that is labeled "extremist" by the state — even if it wasn't labeled as such at the time they made a donation or publicly supported it.

The so-called "extremist" organizations are usually free press, NGOs, and activist groups.

Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant in focus of Ukraine peace talks. What's at stake?

"The United States could be very helpful in running those plants with its electricity and utility expertise. American ownership of those plants would be the best protection for that infrastructure," White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a press briefing on March 19.

A Russian serviceman patrols the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Enerhodar, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, on May 1, 2022. (Andrey Borodulin/AFP via Getty Images)

The second distinction between Russia before the all-out war and today’s Russia is the country's sociopolitical structure.

Before the all-out war, the country's population was divided somewhat similarly to other developing countries. There were liberals, mostly in highly urbanized areas, and there were those who supported the regime, mostly working in state-provided jobs or living in small towns and villages.

Criminals were in jails, far-right extremists were marginalized, and despite the country experiencing ethnic conflicts, terror attacks, and social rifts, overall, the state apparatus was able to keep the social and political upheavals in check.

Following the start of Russia’s all-out brutal war, the far-right warmongering ultra-nationalists became the state's most active social group.

The Russian Armed Forces have also become the country's largest employer, increasing its ranks by offering large sums of money to those signing the contract and to the families of those killed in action, by forcibly mobilizing a part of the population and by allowing convicts, including those who committed the most horrendous crimes, to join the army in exchange for a presidential pardon.

According to BBC Russia, around 10% of prisons are to be closed in Russia due to them being emptied out by the country's Armed Forces.

Russian casualty rates are high, estimated to have hit over 150,000-200,000 killed and hundreds of thousands injured. The majority, however, are alive and will return home at some point.

The third distinction is the way the economy works.

Over 32% of Russia's budget is now devoted to the military-industrial complex. The country has dived into military Keynesianism, where the increase in military spending leads to economic growth.

The main idea behind such an economic model is that the military industry constantly requires additional spending, creating goods, jobs and increasing the financial well-being of those involved.

The unchecked increase in financial stimulus, however, creates an economic overheating, where inflation continues to rise despite the state's attempt to tame it by increasing the interest rate. Russia ended 2024 with a nearly 10% official inflation and a 21% interest rate. Not critical, but far from great.

The downsides of such an economic model is that the funds are taken away from the public sector and people's social security. To build a new tank factory, the money is taken from healthcare or education.

Another downside is that it's hard to recalibrate the economy after the war, when the main driver of economic growth suddenly stops.

Trump wants a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia – which side would gain more?

Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded that Kyiv first halt mobilization, military training, and foreign aid deliveries before Russia would consider halting military action.

Ukrainian soldiers practice firing PKM machine gun in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, on Feb. 24, 2025. (Roman Chop/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)

Following the war's end, Russia will witness the return of hundreds of thousands of people, many of them having a record of committing serious crimes either in Ukraine or back home. They would be left without a job and the high salary that Russia pays its soldiers.

A Russian soldier fighting in Ukraine receives over $2,000 a month. Meanwhile, an average monthly salary in Russia is $600.

In the 1980s, the Soviets fought a long war in Afghanistan. They didn't win. A total of 625,000 Soviet soldiers went through Afghanistan. Immediately after the war's end, crime rates and drug abuse have drastically increased. Those injured and those with PTSD were not able to find themselves back home. The state didn't care, and the war veterans became critical of the government, adding another brick to the country's downfall.

If Russia doesn't outright win the war, the war veterans and the ultra-nationalists would likely become the new opposition, accusing the government of not finishing the job.

Former convicts, freed from prosecution after going to Ukraine to kill people for money, would now also be back home. That might cause more problems for the state.

Even now, when the war is far from over, the social tension is high. Soldiers who return home are committing crimes, and the state is turning a blind eye on such cases so as not to create a rift between the official propaganda, which portrays soldiers as heroes protecting the fatherland, and reality, where those who committed murders in the past commit them again.

A few horrendous examples from the previous months include men who raped and murdered women being pardoned and sent to the front line, and an ultra-nationalist soldier who was accused of molesting a child yet escaped prosecution by returning to the barracks.

In a totalitarian state, where everything must be under complete control and where no public discontent is allowed, it would be tough to maintain order.

Meanwhile, the country's economy will be overheated and will need to be readjusted. A decrease in spending on the military-industrial complex will hit the companies producing tanks, bullets, drones, military uniforms, food supplies, and other goods.

This will lead to massive layoffs.

It's a bit speculative to try to predict what would happen to the Russian economy after the war, as it would depend on the country's posture, as well as how much, if any, land it would be able to steal from Ukraine, and whether the sanctions would be lifted in full or in part.

But it also simplifies the answer a bit — if the sanctions are maintained, the influx of people and the lack of foreign investment and bilateral trade will choke the Russian economy in the long-run.

If sanctions are lifted, and foreign companies and investors begin to return, no matter how complicated the sociopolitical situation would be, the country's economy and the regime would be saved.

17. Law experts raise alarms over police action in DOGE Institute of Peace dispute

I would not be surprised if there was a prime directive somewhere that calls for the elimination of all soft power. There seems to be a pattern.

Even if all these soft power levers of statecraft were miraculously revitalized due to court or congressional action they will never be effectively employed again during this administration. But it did not have to be this way. The rorny is that these agencies would have supported the administration's agenda. And individuals within them who would not could have been eliminated.

I fear we have lost these tools of statecraft for the foreseeable future.

Law experts raise alarms over police action in DOGE Institute of Peace dispute

NPR · by Meg Anderson · March 20, 2025

The United States Institute of Peace building Monday in Washington. Jose Luis Magana/AP

Leadership at the U.S. Institute of Peace has known for weeks that the Trump administration, as well as Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, had its eyes on them.

But that foresight didn't seem to matter when Washington, D.C.'s local police force escorted them away from the building Monday afternoon — and allowed a new regime to take over.

"We have been talking to them for many weeks now in anticipation of just this possibility and also to remind them that we are a private, nonprofit corporation in the District of Columbia and therefore not a federal agency," George Moose, head of the institute until this week, told reporters on the steps of the building that day. "And therefore, the federal government had no entitlement to come in and take over our building."

Sponsor Message

Yet the building – with its arched facade across the street from the State Department – became the site of a tense standoff this week between the institute's employees and staffers with the Trump administration and DOGE.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell denied a request Wednesday by the institute to stop the takeover, saying it was difficult to determine whether the Trump administration's actions were lawful. The judge said a fundamental question remains as to whether the institute, which works to prevent violent conflicts abroad, is an independent agency or part of the executive branch.

DOGE entering in dramatic fashion isn't all that unusual these days: The group – itself not a government agency – is working to gut the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, among others.

What is unusual is that the police got involved – an occurrence Judge Howell said was "deeply troubling."

A routine and unusual call

Both parties called the Metropolitan Police Department for help – putting law enforcement in the middle of the conflict, and prompting questions for how officers arrived at the decision to side with the Trump administration.

At around 4 p.m. on Monday, DOGE and Trump staffers were still trying to enter the building. According to a statement from the police department, that's when the interim U.S. Attorney for D.C., Ed Martin, stepped in.

Sponsor Message

Because the district does not have statehood, Martin is the district's main prosecutor. He was appointed by the president, and is widely regarded as a Trump loyalist. He did not respond to NPR's request for an interview.

According to the MPD statement, Martin directed police to a letter saying Moose had been replaced. With that letter in hand, the police asked Moose to leave.

The MPD statement detailed more on Martin's direction that day.

"The USAO provided the contact information for the acting USIP President, so MPD members could speak directly with him," the statement said. "MPD members met with the acting USIP President, and he provided the MPD members with documentation that he was the acting USIP President, with all powers delegated by the USIP Board of Directors to that role."

"In some ways this was a fairly routine call," says Vanessa Batters-Thompson, executive director of the D.C. Appleseed Center for Law and Justice. "And in other ways it's very unusual."

Police officers are frequently called to situations where it's not immediately clear who's in the right — for instance, in a fight between a landlord and a tenant.

"Metropolitan Police did what they were trained to do," says Batters-Thompson. "They went into the building. They notified the people who were there that they were now trespassing and they got them to leave peacefully."

A question of weaponizing law enforcement

DOGE has pointed to that letter as its justification for taking over the institute and involving the police, saying Moose acted unlawfully by refusing to comply. Representatives for the group did not respond to NPR's request for an interview.

"George is not the Acting President. He was removed from his position," White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly wrote on social media. "George is actually a career bureaucrat who wants to be unaccountable to the American people. The Trump Administration won't let him."

Sponsor Message

But the question, Batters-Thompson says, is whether the letter regarding Moose's firing was a valid legal document.

The institute, for its part, is arguing that it is not: The organization has sued the Trump administration, maintaining that it is an independent nonprofit established by Congress, and that the administration did not follow the proper steps to remove its leadership.

Others agree. Democratic Congressman Don Beyer called DOGE's actions an illegal power grab and said it weaponized law enforcement.

"My office has received dozens of calls and emails from concerned neighbors about MPD's involvement," D.C. Councilmember Zachary Parker posted on social media. "I share these concerns."

It also muddles the question of who police should answer to, says Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown University, who was also an MPD reserve officer from 2016 to 2020.

"For the first time in a very, very long time, street level police officers have to ask themselves whether they're being told to do something that is itself lawful. And that's not normally something police have to worry about," says Brooks. "I don't think they can fully trust the politically appointed people who are giving them direction, which places them in a really impossible position."

She says that question of who to trust is hovering over the heads of police officers in a more vivid way than ever before, especially in D.C. which is tied so closely to the federal government.

NPR · by Meg Anderson · March 20, 2025

18. Pentagon cuts $580 million including grants for emissions, diversity, AI programs

Okay. Perhaps a misleading headline. I understand diversity cuts. I even understand emission cuts. But what about AI? AI is the future of warfare (and life as we know it).

I guess this AI program is cut because it appears to be DEI related because "equitable" is in the name. So maybe all the rest of the AI programs remain fully funded.

Excerpts:

• $9 million for a university project developing “equitable AI and machine learning models”

Pentagon cuts $580 million including grants for emissions, diversity, AI programs

Stars and Stripes · by Seth Robson · March 21, 2025

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivers recorded remarks at the Pentagon near Washington D.C., March 20, 2025. (Madelyn Keech/U.S. Air Force)

Grants aimed at eliminating carbon emissions by warships, diversifying the Navy, and developing equitable artificial intelligence are among $580 million in spending cuts announced recently by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“I need lethal machine learning models, not equitable machine learning models,” he said in a video posted Thursday on the Defense Department’s website, showing him signing a memo directing the cuts.

The deleted programs, grants and contracts do not align with the priorities of President Donald Trump or the department, Hegseth said.

“In other words, they are not a good use of taxpayer dollars,” he said. “Ultimately, that’s who funds us, and we owe you transparency and making sure we’re using it well.”

The announcement came a day after CNN reported on proposals to consolidate some of the nation’s combatant commands and cancel a planned restructuring of U.S. Forces Japan.

A Pentagon briefing document cited by the news outlet said consolidating four commands could save about $330 million over five years. The annual defense budget is about $800 billion.

The Republican chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services committees pushed back, saying significant changes to the command structure would be unacceptable without congressional input.

“[W]e will not accept significant changes to our warfighting structure that are made without a rigorous interagency process, coordination with combatant commanders and the Joint Staff, and collaboration with Congress,” Rep. Mike Rogers and Sen. Roger Wicker said in a news release Wednesday.

Trump has given Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, broad authority to cut personnel and spending across the federal government, including the Pentagon.

“At the DOD, we’ve been working hand-in-hand with the DOGE team,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a video posted March 3.

The Pentagon plans to eliminate 50,000 to 60,000 civilian jobs as part of the initial wave of budget reductions.

The largest contract cut announced Thursday was for a human resources software development program, Hegseth said. The program was expected to take one year and cost $36 million but has instead taken eight years, ran $280 million over budget, and failed to deliver its intended service, he said.

“So, that’s 780% over budget,” he said. “We’re not doing that anymore.”

The Pentagon is also canceling contracts for external consulting services, including $30 million for unused information technology licenses, Hegseth said.

The department is cutting $360 million in grants, he said, including:

• $6 million for decarbonizing emissions from Navy ships

• $5.2 million for diversifying the Navy

• $9 million for a university project developing “equitable AI and machine learning models”

The cuts bring total Pentagon savings to $800 million in recent weeks, Hegseth said.

The savings will ensure troops have what they need, he added.

“They’re working hard,” he said. “We’re working hard with them. We appreciate the work that they’re doing, and we have a lot more coming.”

Stars and Stripes · by Seth Robson · March 21, 2025

19. Non-Military Foreign Assistance is Now DoD’s Problem

Will this require more DOD funding? Just how big can we make the defense budget?

Excerpts:

The next war, natural disaster, disease outbreak, or call for foreign assistance will surely present itself before this national capability is rebuilt in a new incarnation. In the average year, USAID responded to 65 disasters worldwide. Now that it is on life-support, disasters will continue, but it may be years before funding streams, organizational structures, partnerships, and trust are restored. There is no indication that the organizational restructuring effort of USAID will go smoothly or that the dozens of related lawsuits will play out quickly. In the meantime, there is currently no one at the helm of mobilizing and funding the vast network of NGOs and IOs who are the foreign assistance boots on the ground. Even when, or if, the tasks are allocated to new agencies or are restructured under the Department of State, the loss of an entire workforce, experienced and trained in foreign assistance, will be acutely felt.

Considering these facts, DoD must consider the posture, size, and readiness of its non-lethal capabilities in addition to retooling joint doctrine, training, and professional military education. During stabilization, humanitarian, and disaster response operations, additional special operations, engineer, logistics, and acquisition specialists will be needed to fill the coordinating, oversight, supply chain, and contracting expertise lost in the breakup of USAID. For policymakers, every effort should be made to quickly reestablish this lost civilian capability. Its direction must be in line with the administration’s guidance, of course, but its capability must be robust. The greatest benefactor of doing so would be DoD.

Non-Military Foreign Assistance is Now DoD’s Problem

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/03/21/non-military-foreign-assistance-is-now-dods-problem/

by Seth Middleton

03.21.2025 at 06:00am

Current State of Foreign Assistance

In the opening weeks of the Trump administration, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) downsized USAID by approximately 90% in terms of work force and worldwide contracts. At the same time, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth emphasized on his first day at the Pentagon that “lethality, warfighting, and readiness” will be his focus while in office. Unfortunately, President Trump’s dismantling of USAID, the government’s main non-military foreign assistance arm, will force Department of Defense (DoD) to be the de facto lead agency for Foreign Humanitarian Assistance (FHA) and stabilization activities. This new focus area for the DoD will detract from, rather than improve, the department’s lethality, warfighting capabilities, and readiness. It is unlikely that the Trump administration will completely end non-military aid. This is because doing so would remove an implement of US economic leverage, which is a tool favored by the Trump administration, as demonstrated with the turning on and off foreign military assistance to partners like Ukraine and use of tariffs against Mexico and Canada. While the Trump administration has critiqued USAID’s “decades of institutional drift” and perceived advancement of liberal agendas, it appears that foreign assistance will continue on a reduced scale in line with our perceived national interests.

From the American Relief Administration after WWI to the Marshall Plan after WWII, the US has used military and economic foreign assistance as a tool to implement foreign policy for over a hundred years. Since 1961, with the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act and President John F. Kennedy’s subsequent executive order, USAID has been the lead federal agency for non-military foreign assistance, including humanitarian assistance and disaster response. During these sixty years, the US government has continued to use assistance for a variety of policy aims ranging from countering the appeal of Communism, to post-war stabilization efforts and disincentivizing extremism. While it is true that the US provides a great share (approximately 40%) of the world’s humanitarian aid funding, it is our capacity to do so that makes us a superpower and our willingness to do so that makes us exceptional. Leaders, like the United States, lead; and if we do not, our adversaries will. If U.S. policymakers wish to continue to use non-military foreign aid as a foreign policy tool, it will be DoD who will fill the gap left by USAID’s sudden absence.

Doctrinal Role of USAID and the Military

The US military also has had a long history of involvement in FHA and disaster response but has played a secondary role since the establishment of USAID. Not only did USAID have unique HA funding mechanisms, but it also provided coordination of private sector aid efforts, oversight of its NGO and IO partners, and embedded advisors to combatant commands and Joint Task Forces (JTFs). Joint Publication (JP) 3-29, Foreign Humanitarian Assistance, contains over 150 mentions of USAID and notes that it “plays a vital role in promoting US national security and foreign policy” with work in over 100 developing countries and working relationships with 3,500 companies and over 300 US-based NGOs. JP 3-0, Joint Campaigns and Operations, adds that where USAID has a presence, it “usually has the strongest network of contacts and information on international organizations”. With the dismantlement of USAID, the US has not only lost significant international economic and social power projection capability, but has also lost institutional memory, processes, physical presence, relationships, cultural acumen, and trust with non-governmental and international partners. In fact, some of those partners no longer exist due to the abrupt funding freeze. The impact of these facts on future military operations will be significant.

In addition to the burden that USAID took off the shoulders of commanders in FHA, joint doctrine also heavily emphasizes its role in stability operations. JP 3-0 notes the importance of planning for the transition from combat to stability operations and is quick to point out that “USAID is the lead implementing agency for non-security US stabilization assistance”. Likewise, JP 3-07, Joint Stabilization Activities, lists USAID scores of times with guidance on how the military should coordinate with USAID individual bureaus and offices that are dedicated to humanitarian assistance, health, education, governance, restoration of essential services, economic growth, contracting, and more. It emphasizes DoD’s reliance on USAID for planning, advising, assessing needs, its unique funding authorities, evaluating project effectiveness, and implementing anti-corruption and counter-trafficking protocols. Most of these offices and capabilities no longer exist.

Recent Historical Example

Since the end of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, DoD has renewed its focus on large scale combat operations (LSCO), and yet the humanitarian aspect of LSCO will now fall more heavily upon DoD, distracting it from its mission of lethality and warfighting. Two months after the conclusion of the Battle of Mosul in 2017, which was arguably the largest urban siege since WWII, the U.S. Training Doctrine Command (TRADOC)-commissioned Mosul Study Group published What the Battle of Mosul Teaches the Force. Its observation on Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) describes the coordination that took place between the government of Iraq, the United Nations, and NGOs. For coalition forces, it notes that “USAID’s Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) was a key partner in working with the government of Iraq,” but for future conflict it warns that if host nations are not prepared, the US Army may be the one charged with executing this “resource-intensive task in dense urban environments”. One should add that the same is doubly true in the absence of its key partner, USAID.

As the senior U.S. Civil Affairs officer in the Combined Joint Land Forces Component Command (CJFLCC) in Iraq in 2017-18, I well remember the critical role that USAID played in funding and synchronizing the efforts of dozens of NGOs and IOs to plan and provide for the nearly three million displaced civilians. Due to their NGO network and unique positioning in the humanitarian ecosystem, USAID advisors also played a vital role in notifying DoD of the locations and movement of humanitarian convoys, thus reducing the chances of friendly fire. That mechanism too is now shutdown and the US military cannot count on this capability in current war planning. Without a fully capable and functioning FHA and Disaster Response (DR) lead federal agency, separate from DoD, the hand-waving of civilian and humanitarian problems in training will catch up with commanders in the field. The vastly reduced manpower and capabilities of USAID have produced a critical gap in how DoD doctrinally trains for and expects LSCO to proceed in relation to civilians.

Some may argue that DoD engaged heavily in HA, reconstruction, and development in Iraq and Afghanistan and could be equipped to do so again. The Commander’s Emergency Response Program (CERP) was established to empower commanders for humanitarian relief and reconstruction efforts and the military-heavy Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) concept was created in “response to the challenges of nation building in post-conflict intervention zones”. As mentioned earlier, however, DoD has shifted its focus from COIN and stability operations to the core missions of its component forces, namely large-scale combat. That is at least partly due to the mixed results and frustration commanders experienced in trying to use the blunt instrument of military power in Iraq and Afghanistan for something it was ill-suited to do. Furthermore, even in those efforts, commanders could consult and coordinate with USAID professionals in the execution of CERP, and USAID personnel were embedded in the PRTs, provided expertise at the regional levels, funded and coordinated NGO and IO efforts, and led the US response to natural disasters that occurred concurrent to stabilization efforts, such as the avalanches, floods, and earthquakes that periodically struck Afghanistan and surrounding countries in the past 20 years.

Call to Action

The next war, natural disaster, disease outbreak, or call for foreign assistance will surely present itself before this national capability is rebuilt in a new incarnation. In the average year, USAID responded to 65 disasters worldwide. Now that it is on life-support, disasters will continue, but it may be years before funding streams, organizational structures, partnerships, and trust are restored. There is no indication that the organizational restructuring effort of USAID will go smoothly or that the dozens of related lawsuits will play out quickly. In the meantime, there is currently no one at the helm of mobilizing and funding the vast network of NGOs and IOs who are the foreign assistance boots on the ground. Even when, or if, the tasks are allocated to new agencies or are restructured under the Department of State, the loss of an entire workforce, experienced and trained in foreign assistance, will be acutely felt.

Considering these facts, DoD must consider the posture, size, and readiness of its non-lethal capabilities in addition to retooling joint doctrine, training, and professional military education. During stabilization, humanitarian, and disaster response operations, additional special operations, engineer, logistics, and acquisition specialists will be needed to fill the coordinating, oversight, supply chain, and contracting expertise lost in the breakup of USAID. For policymakers, every effort should be made to quickly reestablish this lost civilian capability. Its direction must be in line with the administration’s guidance, of course, but its capability must be robust. The greatest benefactor of doing so would be DoD.

Tags: DOGE, foreign assistance, humanitarian aid, non-military foreign assistance, USAID

About The Author

Seth Middleton
Lieutenant Colonel (retired) Seth Middleton commissioned in the Army from West Point in 2000 serving as a Civil Affairs officer with assignments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Mali. He taught Joint and Interagency Operations as an Assistant Professor at the Command and General Staff College for three years and holds a master’s degree in strategic security from the National Defense University. He worked at USAID’s Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance for three glorious weeks in 2025 before being laid off and is currently a PhD student in French at the University of Kansas.

20. Semper Paratus and Special Forces: Why the Coast Guard Should be Part of the SOCOM Enterprise

I recall doing very good operations with Coast Guard Cutters, AC 130 gunships, SF (Green Beret) maritime operations teams, and SEALs conducting some good counterdrug work. We had a pretty good task force.

But this would be a huge paradigm shift. But is this calling for making the USCG part of USSOCOM or simply creating task forces and more integrated working relationships or having a more formal relationship with being fully absorbed into the command (- supporting to supported or general support for example)?

I cannot see such a major reorganization happen not only over the breaking of rice bowls but also authorities and roles and responsibilities. I fear this would dilute our special operations capabilities (and funding).

But a closer more integrated working relationship with some capabilities could be very beneficial.

Semper Paratus and Special Forces: Why the Coast Guard Should be Part of the SOCOM Enterprise

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/03/21/semper-paratus-and-special-forces-why-the-coast-guard-should-be-part-of-the-socom-enterprise/

by Jorge Valente

03.21.2025 at 06:00am

“The idea of Coast Guard Special Forces is a foreign concept to most people, counterintuitive to some, and outright offensive to the remainder…however it was a reality.” – Matthew Mitchell

Introduction

The U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) has a longstanding history of engagement in special operations, demonstrating its versatility and effectiveness in unconventional missions. During World War II, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) recruited USCG personnel for their expertise in swimming, diving, boat handling, and signaling. These highly skilled Coast Guardsmen were deployed across the European, China-Burma-India, and Pacific theaters, where they conducted seaborne reconnaissance, infiltration, and sabotage operations critical to the war effort.

In the 1980s, the USCG once again played a pivotal role in specialized operations. With the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) lacking maritime and riverine capabilities and the U.S. Navy restricted to training partner nation forces, the Coast Guard established the Drug Interdiction Assist Teams (DIAT). Comprised of U.S. Army Ranger School graduates, these elite teams embedded with host nation forces to execute joint offensive operations targeting cocaine production networks and laboratories in Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Panama.

Today, the USCG maintains three unique Deployable Specialized Forces (DSF) that can enhance the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) enterprise through their specialized capabilities and operational flexibility.

Counterterrorism (CT) Terms

The U.S. Coast Guard maintains two elite counterterrorism units: the Maritime Security Response Teams (MSRT) East and West. These highly specialized forces are globally deployable within four hours, providing rapid response capabilities to emerging threats. MSRT’s Direct Action teams are expertly trained in Close Quarters Combat (CQC) and include precision marksmen, explosive detection canines, and small boat tactical delivery teams. Equipped for high-risk operations, they are capable of helicopter and boat assault force insertion and extraction across the full spectrum of conflict. Additionally, they are capable of operating in chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high-yield explosive (CBRNE) environments, ensuring mission effectiveness in even the most challenging conditions.

Counterdrug (CD) Terms

In 1982, the U.S. Coast Guard established Law Enforcement Detachment Teams (LEDETs) to enhance maritime interdiction capabilities. These highly trained teams deploy aboard U.S. Navy, NATO, and allied surface vessels to intercept and interdict drug-smuggling operations. LEDET personnel undergo a rigorous, physically and mentally demanding course covering high-risk maritime interdiction, CQC, maritime law enforcement, treaties, regulations, and international law.

Over time, LEDET missions have expanded beyond counterdrug operations into gray zone and low-intensity conflict environments. Notably, LEDETs have deployed with the U.S. Navy’s Combined Task Force 151 to combat piracy off the coasts of Somalia and Oman, enforced sanctions in the Persian Gulf against Iraq, and supported NATO vessels in upholding United Nations embargoes against former Yugoslav republics. These operations demonstrate the LEDETs’ adaptability and critical role in global maritime security.

Costal Riverine Forces

The U.S. Coast Guard’s Port Security Units (PSUs) play a critical role in maritime security, operating as an integral component of the U.S. Navy’s Expeditionary Combat Command (NECC) within the Coastal Riverine Forces. These highly capable units conduct maritime security operations across all phases of military operations, ensuring the protection of strategic ports, waterways, and high-value assets in both combat and contingency environments.

The Semper Paratus Value to SOCOM

U.S. Coast Guard DSF personnel can significantly enhance Special Operations Forces (SOF) capacity across a wide range of mission sets. The MSRTs and LEDETs can provide the Joint Force with additional counterterrorism CT and CD capabilities, respectively, while PSUs can support Coastal Riverine Units in the infiltration and exfiltration of SOF personnel—missions historically conducted by Coast Guard forces in Vietnam.

Beyond direct action roles, all three units can contribute to U.S. Special Operations Command’s (SOCOM) Security Force Assistance (SFA) mission. As a humanitarian service, the Coast Guard brings extensive subject matter expertise to Foreign Humanitarian Assistance (FHA) operations. While the DIATs have been disestablished, Coast Guard personnel have demonstrated their value in Foreign Internal Defense (FID) missions. Today’s MSRTs, LEDETs, and PSUs possess the knowledge, skills, and operational experience necessary to support and enhance FID efforts worldwide.

The number of nations establishing coast guard forces has risen exponentially in the 21st century, driven by the post-9/11 security landscape, increasing piracy, illegal fishing, drug smuggling, and irregular maritime migration. Embedding U.S. Coast Guard Deployable DSF personnel within SOF Liaison Elements (SOFLE) could serve as a force multiplier, enabling partner nations to better enforce sovereignty over their territorial waters. Such integration fosters peer-to-peer relationships with local coast guards, navies, and maritime law enforcement agencies, enhancing regional security cooperation.

Despite these advantages, some may argue against integrating USCG capabilities into SOCOM. Skeptics may contend that Coast Guard missions are inherently law enforcement-focused rather than military in nature, that USCG training does not match the standards of other SOF units, or that the current process—where the Department of Defense (DoD) issues a Request for Forces (RFF) to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) when Coast Guard support is needed—remains sufficient.

However, USCG personnel bring unique advantages, operating under both Title 10 (military) and Title 14 (law enforcement) authorities, which extend their capabilities beyond traditional law enforcement roles. CT and CD operations span multiple agencies, including DHS, DoD, and the Department of Justice, making the Coast Guard’s expertise highly transferable to DoD missions. For example, At-Sea Space Accountability (ASSA), a specialized capability of LEDETs, can be critical in enforcing international sanctions and embargoes. Additionally, MSRTs provide advanced capabilities to support global anti-piracy and CT operations.

DSF personnel undergo rigorous training, including the U.S. Coast Guard’s Tactical Operator Course (TOC), which demands exceptional physical and mental resilience and has a high attrition rate. USCG personnel have successfully completed the U.S. Navy’s Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training and the U.S. Army Ranger School in the past. MSRT personnel also routinely train alongside U.S. Navy SEALs, further refining their combat and operational effectiveness.

Conclusion

Maintaining the status quo introduces an unnecessary interagency step that delays response times during international crises. By fully integrating into the SOCOM enterprise, DSF units could dedicate a team specifically to SOF missions, ensuring rapid, specialized support without bureaucratic delays.

Tags: counterdrug, SOCOM, US Coast Guard, USSOCOM

About The Author

Jorge Valente
Jorge Valente is a U.S. Coast Guard Search and Rescue and Maritime Law Enforcement Officer. He has served aboard a Coast Guard Cutter, Sectors, and Deployable Specialized Forces across the country, executing Search and Rescue, Counter-Drug operations, and Counter-Terrorism missions. He has also served as the Coast Guard Liaison Officer to the Dominican Republic. He is currently a Resident Student at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, PA. His writings do not reflect the position of the US Coast Guard, Department of Defense, or the Department of Homeland Security.

21. How to Make Putin Laugh….Keep Trump Waiting

Excerpts:

Trump's approach to Putin and Russia represents a high-stakes gamble with America's position in the world. By prioritizing relationships with autocratic regimes over traditional alliances, the administration risks undermining the international system that has served American interests for decades.

The image of Putin laughing as he kept the American president waiting encapsulates a troubling dynamic: an American president seemingly eager to accommodate a geopolitical competitor at the expense of very clear US national security interests.

As Foreign Policy magazine suggests, "Whether intended or not, Trump's decision to break with the camp of liberal Western democracies may bring about the sudden acceleration of a long-overdue process of readjusting the international order to reflect the real distribution of power in today's world."[15]

The question remains whether this realignment will ultimately serve American interests—or primarily benefit those, like Putin, who have long sought to diminish American global influence and fragment Western alliances. The laughter in Moscow suggests Putin, at least, believes he knows the answer.

How to Make Putin Laugh….Keep Trump Waiting

https://www.strategycentral.io/post/how-to-make-putin-laugh-keep-trump-waiting?utm

21 hours ago10 min read

Trump's Foreign Policy Gamble

STRATEGY CENTRAL

For and By Practitioners

By Monte Erfourth – March 20, 2025

The Laughter Heard Around the World

When Russian President Vladimir Putin was informed he was running late for his scheduled call with U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday, his response was telling: a smile, followed by laughter shared with those around him at the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs congress in Moscow. The moment, captured on video and widely circulated on social media, spoke volumes about the curious dynamics of the Trump-Putin relationship. As noted by Pekka Kallioniemi, a nonresident research fellow at the International Centre for Defense and Security, "They're literally making fun of Trump and his convoy."[1]

This was not an isolated incident. Putin has a history of keeping American officials waiting, including Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, who reportedly waited eight hours while Putin met with Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko.2 Though the Trump administration denied these reports, the pattern reveals something significant about how Putin views his American counterpart – not as an equal to be respected, but as someone to be managed.

The March 2025 phone call, initially scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. ET but delayed by an hour, was ostensibly to discuss a potential ceasefire in Ukraine after three years of devastating conflict. What emerged instead was a stark reminder of the imbalance in what Trump has characterized as a potentially productive relationship.

During their two-hour phone call on Tuesday, March 18, 2025, President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin discussed potential steps toward a ceasefire in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict. The Trump administration sought a comprehensive 30-day ceasefire as an initial move toward a lasting peace agreement. However, President Putin declined this proposal, agreeing only to a 30-day halt on attacks targeting Ukraine's energy infrastructure. Additionally, Putin demanded that all foreign military aid and intelligence support to Ukraine cease, a condition deemed unacceptable by Ukraine and its allies.

This sliver of compromise mostly benefits Russia as Ukraine has been highly effective at targeting Russian power nodes. Worse than no compromise, Putin kept Trump waiting, offered nothing, and made the American President look weak as he tried to tout the phone call as a success. Watching our President demure to a man clearly not that into him is like witnessing a tragic one-sided romance—except the stakes involve nuclear weapons instead of prom tickets.

The Odd Couple: An Asymmetric Relationship

The relationship between Trump and Putin defies conventional understanding of great power dynamics. Russia, with an economy smaller than Italy's, commands extraordinary deference from the American president. As The Economist aptly noted, "It is odd that Mr. Trump seems so ready to give [what Putin wants] to him."[3]

Despite Russia's relatively weak economic position, is extremely isolated internationally, and can’t beat a much weaker opponent militarily, Trump consistently treats Putin as if Russia holds the stronger hand in the high-stakes poker game of international affairs. This persistent pattern raises fundamental questions about Trump's approach to foreign policy and America's long-term strategic interests.

Trump's admiration for Putin is well-documented, dating back to his first term. What makes this relationship particularly unusual is that it appears to run counter to traditional American geopolitical interests. As Foreign Policy magazine observed, "Trump's decision to break with the camp of liberal Western democracies may bring about the sudden acceleration of a long-overdue process of readjusting the international order."[4] The new order is likely to dimmish American power projection, global trading network, and make the world a less safe place.

The Trump Foreign Policy Doctrine: Autocrats Over Allies

Trump's broader foreign policy approach appears to favor autocratic regimes over traditional democratic allies. This preference manifests in several ways:

Withdrawal from traditional alliances: Questioning NATO's relevance, demanding European nations take full responsibility for Ukraine's security, and characterizing the war as something that "doesn't have much of an effect on us because we have a big, beautiful ocean in between."[5]
Praise for authoritarian leaders: Frequent expressions of admiration for strong-arm tactics employed by leaders in Russia, Hungary, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere. He has publicly heaped distain on democracies leaders.
Transactional diplomacy: Viewing international relations primarily through the lens of immediate economic advantage rather than long-term strategic partnerships.
Retreat from international institutions: Withdrawing from key United Nations institutions and other multilateral frameworks.

This approach represents a dramatic departure from decades of bipartisan American foreign policy that prioritized democratic alliances as the cornerstone of U.S. global influence. The decision to pursue closer ties with Russia at the potential expense of traditional alliances carries few potential benefits and many significant risks.

Best-Case Scenario: A New Strategic Realignment

While the risks of Trump's Russia-friendly approach are significant, it's worth considering what the best possible outcome might look like if the strategy succeeds. Proponents of closer U.S.-Russia relations envision a fundamental restructuring of the global order that could potentially serve American interests in several ways:

Countering Chinese Influence

The most compelling strategic argument for a U.S.-Russia rapprochement is the potential to drive a wedge between Russia and China. Despite their "no-limits partnership," Russia and China have historically been uneasy neighbors with competing interests in Central Asia, the Far East, and global influence. By bringing Russia into America's orbit, the U.S. could potentially isolate China diplomatically and economically, enhancing America's position in what many see as the defining geopolitical competition of the 21st century.

In this scenario, Russia would serve as a counterweight to Chinese power in Eurasia, possibly even facilitating American efforts to contain Chinese expansion. While Russia currently depends more on China than it ever will on America, a fundamental shift in relations could change this dynamic over time.

Energy Cooperation and Market Stability

Russia possesses vast natural resources, particularly in energy. Closer cooperation could potentially lead to more stable global energy markets. By coordinating with Russia rather than competing against it, the U.S. and its allies might secure more reliable energy supplies at predictable prices, reducing market volatility.

Additionally, cooperation on energy development, particularly in the Arctic, could yield significant economic benefits. Trump has specifically highlighted the potential for joint ventures in Arctic gas exploration as an opportunity for American investment.

Resolving Frozen Conflicts

A genuine U.S.-Russia alliance might create opportunities to resolve numerous "frozen conflicts" that have persisted across Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. From Transnistria to South Ossetia, many of these conflicts persist partly because of great power competition. In this optimistic scenario, a new U.S.-Russia understanding could lead to comprehensive settlements that bring greater stability to these regions.

A New Security Architecture for Europe

Advocates for rapprochement argue that NATO expansion created unnecessary tension with Russia. A reset in relations could potentially lead to a new European security architecture that accommodates legitimate Russian security concerns while still protecting the sovereignty of European nations.

This might include neutrality arrangements for buffer states, verifiable arms control agreements, and new multilateral security frameworks. Under this vision, Europe might achieve greater strategic autonomy, reducing its dependence on American security guarantees while maintaining peaceful relations with Russia.

Counter-Terrorism and Non-Proliferation

Russia and the United States share concerns about radical Islamic terrorism and nuclear proliferation. Closer cooperation could potentially enhance intelligence sharing, joint operations against terrorist groups, and more effective efforts to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

Putin has repeatedly signaled willingness to cooperate on counter-terrorism, and a genuine alliance could make both nations safer from these threats.

Significant Risks

Undermining the rules-based international order: Accepting Russia's territorial aggression against Ukraine sets a dangerous precedent that might embolden other revisionist powers……like China.
Fracturing Western alliances: The approach is already driving wedges between the U.S. and European allies, who are unlikely to follow Trump in accommodating Russian aggression.
Declining U.S. global influence: As traditional allies lose faith in American security guarantees, U.S. soft power and diplomatic influence may diminish.
Nuclear proliferation: Countries that no longer trust U.S. security commitments may pursue their own nuclear deterrents, leading to a more dangerous world.
Economic consequences: Diminished trust in American leadership could impact everything from trade relationships to the willingness of foreign investors to hold U.S. debt.
Emboldening adversaries: Signals of American retreat may encourage not just Russia but China and other competitors to more aggressively assert their interests against American allies.

Most Dangerous Outcomes

Among the potential negative consequences, several deserve particular attention due to their far-reaching implications:

Global Financial Implications

If the United States continues to prioritize relationships with autocratic regimes over its traditional allies and partners, it may face serious economic consequences. Nations that have historically been reliable purchasers of U.S. debt might diversify their holdings, potentially triggering a debt crisis. As of early 2025, foreign holders own approximately $7.4 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities.[8] Any significant reduction in foreign appetite for this debt could force higher interest rates and constrain U.S. fiscal policy.

Furthermore, American products could face shrinking markets abroad if traditional trading partners seek more reliable economic relationships elsewhere. The European Union, Japan, South Korea, and other democratic allies collectively represent massive export markets for U.S. goods and services.

Nuclear Proliferation

Perhaps the most dangerous potential outcome is accelerated nuclear proliferation. Countries that have relied on American security guarantees might conclude that nuclear weapons are the only reliable insurance policy against aggression. South Korea, Japan, and potentially several Middle Eastern states might reconsider their non-nuclear status if American security commitments appear unreliable.

Foreign Policy analyst Nicholas Bequelin notes that "Democracies such as those in Europe—whose economic weight has significantly declined relative to other powers and which remain unable to guarantee their own security—have long been shielded from these vulnerabilities by the United States' commitment to democratic solidarity. Now, they risk slipping further down the global hierarchy."[9] Germany has already begun exploring building nuclear weapons and many others who feel suddenly exposed will follow.

The End of American Credibility

A world in which America's word is not trusted represents a fundamental shift in global affairs. Since World War II, U.S. security guarantees have underpinned global stability and economic prosperity. The dollar's status as the world's reserve currency, the attractiveness of U.S. markets, and American diplomatic influence all depend on the credibility of U.S. commitments.

The Trump administration's apparent willingness to abandon commitments to Ukraine, despite previous security assurances, sends a troubling message to other American partners and allies. As former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson observed regarding Putin's treatment of Trump, "Putin is laughing at us."[10]

The Putin Strategy: Playing the Long Game

Putin's approach to Trump reveals sophisticated strategic thinking. As The Economist explains, "Mr. Putin wants the American president to believe that, as statesmen, they have bigger fish to fry than squabbling over a forlorn place like Ukraine."[11] By dangling the prospect of cooperation on issues like Iran, the Middle East, or potential business opportunities, Putin aims to secure concrete concessions on Ukraine with minimal reciprocal commitments.

This strategy plays to Trump's well-known desire for deals and headline-grabbing diplomatic "wins." However, as The Economist warns, "All this is a fantasy designed to tempt Mr. Trump into giving Mr. Putin what he wants in Ukraine in return for empty promises."12

The reality is that Russia now depends more on China than it ever will on America. Russia's economy remains relatively small, its technological base is limited, and it offers few genuine opportunities for mutually beneficial economic partnership with the United States. What Putin primarily seeks is American accommodation of Russian security interests, particularly in what Russia considers its "near abroad."

Trump's Subservience: Puzzling Behavior

Perhaps the most perplexing aspect of the Trump-Putin relationship is Trump's consistent deference to the Russian leader. Despite Putin's public displays of disrespect—like the laughing incident during the scheduled call—Trump continues to seek Putin's approval and cooperation.

This behavior raises troubling questions. Some analysts, like Foreign Policy's Nicholas Bequelin, suggest that Trump's admiration for strongman rule puts him "at odds with democratically elected leaders while earning him, at least rhetorically, the support of autocratic regimes. This backing, in turn, can be leveraged to further weaken democratic checks and balances at home."[13]

Whatever the explanation, the practical effect is a U.S. foreign policy that frequently aligns more closely with Russian interests than with traditional American strategic objectives. As former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer noted, "One price of Trump's concessions to Putin over past six weeks: Putin sees Trump as weak, has no problem keeping him waiting."[14]

Conclusion: A Dangerous Gamble

Trump's approach to Putin and Russia represents a high-stakes gamble with America's position in the world. By prioritizing relationships with autocratic regimes over traditional alliances, the administration risks undermining the international system that has served American interests for decades.

The image of Putin laughing as he kept the American president waiting encapsulates a troubling dynamic: an American president seemingly eager to accommodate a geopolitical competitor at the expense of very clear US national security interests.

As Foreign Policy magazine suggests, "Whether intended or not, Trump's decision to break with the camp of liberal Western democracies may bring about the sudden acceleration of a long-overdue process of readjusting the international order to reflect the real distribution of power in today's world."[15]

The question remains whether this realignment will ultimately serve American interests—or primarily benefit those, like Putin, who have long sought to diminish American global influence and fragment Western alliances. The laughter in Moscow suggests Putin, at least, believes he knows the answer.

Bibliography

Bequelin, Nicholas. "The Key to Understanding Trump's Chaotic Foreign Policy." Foreign Policy, March 18, 2025.

"Europe's Best Bet for Protecting Postwar Ukraine." Foreign Policy, March 19, 2025.

Mehrara, Maya. "WATCH: Putin Laughs Upon Being Told He's Running Late for Trump Call." Newsweek, March 18, 2025.

"The Trap Vladimir Putin Set for Donald Trump." The Economist, March 19, 2025.

U.S. Department of the Treasury. "Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Securities." 2025.

NOTES PAGE

[1]: Maya Mehrara, "WATCH: Putin Laughs Upon Being Told He's Running Late for Trump Call," Newsweek, March 18, 2025.

[3]: "The Trap Vladimir Putin Set for Donald Trump," The Economist, March 19, 2025.

[4]: Nicholas Bequelin, "The Key to Understanding Trump's Chaotic Foreign Policy," Foreign Policy, March 18, 2025.

[5]: "Europe's Best Bet for Protecting Postwar Ukraine," Foreign Policy, March 19, 2025.

[6]: "The Trap Vladimir Putin Set for Donald Trump," The Economist, March 19, 2025.

[8]: U.S. Department of the Treasury, "Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Securities," 2025.

[9]: Nicholas Bequelin, "The Key to Understanding Trump's Chaotic Foreign Policy," Foreign Policy, March 18, 2025.

[10]: Maya Mehrara, "WATCH: Putin Laughs Upon Being Told He's Running Late for Trump Call," Newsweek, March 18, 2025.

[11]: "The Trap Vladimir Putin Set for Donald Trump," The Economist, March 19, 2025.

[13]: Nicholas Bequelin, "The Key to Understanding Trump's Chaotic Foreign Policy," Foreign Policy, March 18, 2025.

[14]: Maya Mehrara, "WATCH: Putin Laughs Upon Being Told He's Running Late for Trump Call," Newsweek, March 18, 2025.

[15]: Nicholas Bequelin, "The Key to Understanding Trump's Chaotic Foreign Policy," Foreign Policy, March 18, 2025.

22. Timeless Lessons from Cannae to D-Day: Operational Art on the Sensor-Rich Battlefield of the Twenty-First Century

Excerpts:

The proliferation of advanced surveillance and AI-enabled, data-centric technologies demands that operational art must evolve well beyond traditional methods of concealment and surprise. Modern operational art must embrace methods to actively target and manipulate enemy perceptions of one’s visible force deployment. Modern commanders may no longer be able to hide their forces, so instead, they should focus on shaping how adversaries interpret what they see and attempt to influence their decision-making processes deliberately. This shift requires an intimate understanding of the information adversaries seek and the cognitive biases that shape their analysis. Modern battlefield commanders may exploit these biases by providing adversaries with misleading indicators or collected data, guiding the enemy toward wrong assumptions.

Just as Clausewitz recognized the “fog of greater or lesser uncertainty” that shrouds the battlefield, he also understood that war’s immutable nature remains fixed, even as its character changes. The conditions of the modern battlefield, with all its technology and transparency, may be unrecognizable to Hannibal or even to Allied commanders of World War II. But the essential principles that enabled their success in deceiving their enemies remain the same.

Timeless Lessons from Cannae to D-Day: Operational Art on the Sensor-Rich Battlefield of the Twenty-First Century - Modern War Institute

Mark Askew and Antonio Salinas | 03.21.25

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Mark Askew · March 21, 2025

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Among Carl von Clausewitz’s many timeless observations, one in particular stands out as a perpetual impediment to commanders and strategists. “War is the realm of uncertainty,” the Prussian strategist wrote. “Three quarters of the factors on which action is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty.” Throughout military history, commanders have attempted to pierce this fog of war with snippets of information, leveraging human runners, pigeons, and cavalry, and later, telegraphs, radio, and full-motion video. However, for the last thirty years, US forces have employed advanced technology in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms that have provided unprecedented visibility and awareness of battlefield developments. Now, with increasingly lower barriers to entry for use of commercial space-based capabilities and drones, this long-held asymmetric US advantage is eroding. Now that other militaries can use these technologies to approximate US sensing and strike capabilities, achieving operational and tactical surprise will be increasingly difficult.

However, all is not lost. The US military has dealt with symmetries in transparency before. Equally important, increased transparency does not always lead to improved understanding.

While sensor-rich environments make operational concealment harder, they also create opportunities to exploit adversaries’ cognitive biases. Commanders can combine advanced technology with human ingenuity to turn battlefield transparency into an advantage. Planners can do this by understanding adversaries’ information needs, shaping the data they rely on to inform those needs, and manipulating the enemy’s decision-making. This approach requires cross-domain planning and a deep understanding of how opponents process information.

Despite the historical importance of military deception and cognitive warfare, the two recent decades spent fighting irregular opponents have left the US joint force out of practice on how to integrate these elements into campaign design in large-scale combat operations. Yet, today, in the era of strategic competition and as new technologies like artificial intelligence increasingly influence the conduct of military operations, America’s rivals are poised to exploit transparency, making it vital for US planners to refamiliarize themselves with these skills for the looming conflicts in the twenty-first century.

Future operational planners must treat battlefield transparency as an opportunity rather than a limitation. History provides examples that yield clues on how to do so.

Cannae: Shaping Perception in the Fog of War

Making your enemy do what you want is no easy task and only a small number of history’s great captains could do it consistently. One of these was Hannibal of Carthage. The Battle of Cannae, which took place in 216 BCE, during Rome’s epic struggle with Carthage, is an excellent example of how a commander can manipulate an opponent’s perception and biases to achieve victory despite facing overwhelming odds.

Cannae was not the first time Hannibal had fought Roman legions. In the lead-up to Cannae, Hannibal’s army had bested a consular army at the Battle of the Trebia and annihilated a Roman force in one of the most devastating ambushes in military history at Lake Trasimene. Despite these victories, Rome sent yet another army, the largest it had ever dispatched, to deal with the problematic Carthaginian now operating with impunity on the Italian peninsula.

With this latest Roman force closing in on him, Hannibal had to devise a way to overcome his numerical inferiority. To do this, he weaponized knowledge he gained from past engagements with the Romans to bait them into a full-scale frontal attack and commit their tactical reserve, and then use their momentum to envelop them.

Knowing that the Roman commanders would be impatient to defeat him and win glory, Hannibal crafted a trap that seemed to offer an avenue for a quick and decisive victory over their hated foe. The Carthaginian commander placed his weaker forces, consisting of Gauls and Spaniards, in the center of his line. This created what appeared to be a vulnerable part of the Carthaginian line that might collapse if penetrated and result in the destruction of Hannibal’s army. However, this weakness was instead a carefully constructed illusion based on accurate, if misleading, information.

Hannibal wanted the Romans to focus on his center and advance with the bulk of their forces to significantly condense the spacing between Roman units and force the legions to abandon their tactical flexibility, reducing their ability to fight. While the legions advanced into the center, Hannibal’s stronger African infantry and cavalry would conduct a double envelopment of the Roman forces.

When the Romans arrived on the field and observed Hannibal’s deployment, they behaved exactly as Hannibal anticipated, advancing aggressively against his center. Hannibal then executed his planned double envelopment, compacting the Romans in so tightly that they could not fight back effectively, resulting in the destruction of nearly the entire Roman army.

Hannibal’s success at Cannae clearly demonstrated that although the Romans could see virtually all of his forces (a condition like transparency), it was not enough to avoid catastrophic defeat. The brilliance of Hannibal’s battle plan was not in hiding his forces but rather in successfully shaping how the Romans might interpret the intent and context of his activities. Hannibal created a believable deception narrative that led Rome’s military leaders to behave precisely as he wanted. Manipulating his opponent’s perception was the key to this victory, and it illustrated a critical lesson for modern warfare: complete visibility can be crafted into an advantage if you understand how enemy commanders are likely to interpret the information they can gather from the battlefield.

D-Day: Manipulating Adversary Biases

One of the most notable examples of manipulating transparency and enemy perceptions to gain an advantage occurred before the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944 (Operation Overlord). A major challenge for the invasion planners was preventing Germany from deploying reserves to overpower the initial landing forces. The Allies devised a clever solution called Operation Fortitude South, which combined battlefield transparency with the deliberate manipulation of enemy cognitive biases to paralyze enemy decision-making and to misdirect Nazi military power at a crucial moment in the campaign.

Given the nearly two million troops and several thousand ships gathering in southern England, the Allies couldn’t hide their preparations for a cross-channel invasion. The only major question was where exactly the Allies would land. German planners quickly zeroed in on Calais as the most likely landing site because its proximity to England allowed for maximum air coverage and it was along the most direct route into Germany.

Knowing that German planners believed that a landing near Calais was more likely, Allied planners encouraged them to interpret any evidence of a landing in Normandy as merely a diversion for a larger operation aimed at Pas-de-Calais. This manipulation of enemy perceptions was woven into the fabric of Operation Overlord from its earliest stages.

To encourage this German belief, Operation Fortitude South focused on masking the true intent of Allied activities rather than hiding their capabilities or locations. Within the electromagnetic spectrum, the Allies utilized a mix of actual and fictitious units to create substantial and realistic radio traffic, gradually increasing in intensity to simulate the final surges of planning and coordination typical before a major operation. On the ground, planners oversaw the construction of fake headquarters, signal stations, and restricted zones, and staged fake equipment to deceive German air reconnaissance and intelligence networks into believing that a significant Allied buildup in southeastern England aimed at Calais was underway.

The judicious use of Allied double agents provided German intelligence with just enough detail to construct an entirely fictitious order of battle, along with information hinting at Allied objectives near Calais. Allied air planners further complicated German assessments of Allied intent. Allied airpower was employed for continued raids elsewhere in Europe, clouding the enemy’s efforts to discern the Allies’ main focus. Although Allied actions were frequently detected, the German high command maintained a flawed understanding of their true intent.

The most compelling element of Operation Fortitude South, however, was the appointment of General George S. Patton to command the ghost army preparing to lead the cross-channel invasion against Calais. Germany’s military leadership assumed that Patton would play a major role in the upcoming Allied main effort and never considered that the Allies might integrate his high-profile activities into a broadly conceived and well-developed deception narrative.

These misleading impressions, intentionally fostered by Allied planners manipulating the transparency surrounding their efforts, reinforced a German belief that the main Allied effort was a cross-channel invasion aimed at Pas-de-Calais. When the invasion commenced on the night of June 5, 1944, German leadership only committed local forces to counter the initial Allied landings. Despite having significant reserves capable of launching a counterattack—as had been seen at Anzio six months earlier—German commanders held their reserves near Calais, waiting for a cross-channel assault that never came. The Allies’ adept exploitation of transparency and manipulation of enemy expectations, both forms of cognitive warfare, ultimately provided the crucial time needed to ensure the invasion’s success. By incorporating Operation Fortitude into the planning for Operation Overlord almost from the beginning, the Allied invasion got off to an advantageous start.

Shaping Perception on the Future Battlefield: Deceiving Both Human and AI Decision-Makers

With the lessons of these two historical case studies in mind, we can turn our attention to the present: What should operational planners do differently to be successful in the future? Perhaps the most critical factor of future battlefield deception is that we must not only fool human commanders, but also the AI algorithms that inform commanders and staffs.

Commanders can no longer rely on traditional methods of deception like hiding troop movements or equipment. Instead, shaping perceptions in sensor-rich environments requires a shift in thinking—from concealing information to manipulating how the enemy, including AI systems and tools, interpret it. To do this effectively requires more than a superficial understanding of enemy commanders and their goals; it involves feeding adversaries accurate if misleading data that can manipulate their interpretation of information and misdirect their activity.

Another way to deal with AI-enabled commanders and staffs is to make their AI systems ineffective and break their trust in those systems and tools. Commanders can overwhelm AI systems with false signals and present them with unexpected or novel data; AI tools excel at pattern recognition, but struggle with understanding how new variables (outside of their training data) inform or change the context of a situation. Commanders might also organize their counterreconnaissance in such a way to deprive enemy algorithms of the data they need to make effective decisions by attacking enemy sensing as a whole. Using these methods may allow commanders to disrupt enemy decision-making and create exploitable opportunities.

AI will not eliminate war’s chaos, deception, and uncertainty—it will only reshape how those factors manifest. While intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems may provide episodic clarity, they will never offer a perfect, real-time understanding of intent. This means deception must focus on shaping what the adversary thinks is happening rather than avoiding detection altogether. By crafting a believable deception narrative—through signals, false headquarters, and logistical misdirection—commanders can lead enemy AI and human decision-makers to make ineffective decisions.

History provides valuable lessons in shaping enemy perceptions, from Hannibal’s use of bait at Cannae to the Allies’ masterful deception before D-Day. The fundamental principle is a timeless one: adversaries trust intelligence that aligns with their existing biases. If enemy commanders expect a particular action, it becomes easier to convince them it is happening. The challenge is not simply in masking reality but in constructing a version of reality that is compelling and actionable for the enemy.

The proliferation of advanced surveillance and AI-enabled, data-centric technologies demands that operational art must evolve well beyond traditional methods of concealment and surprise. Modern operational art must embrace methods to actively target and manipulate enemy perceptions of one’s visible force deployment. Modern commanders may no longer be able to hide their forces, so instead, they should focus on shaping how adversaries interpret what they see and attempt to influence their decision-making processes deliberately. This shift requires an intimate understanding of the information adversaries seek and the cognitive biases that shape their analysis. Modern battlefield commanders may exploit these biases by providing adversaries with misleading indicators or collected data, guiding the enemy toward wrong assumptions.

Just as Clausewitz recognized the “fog of greater or lesser uncertainty” that shrouds the battlefield, he also understood that war’s immutable nature remains fixed, even as its character changes. The conditions of the modern battlefield, with all its technology and transparency, may be unrecognizable to Hannibal or even to Allied commanders of World War II. But the essential principles that enabled their success in deceiving their enemies remain the same.

Mark Askew is an active duty Army officer and military historian. Askew has over nineteen years of military service as an armor officer, West Point history instructor, and Army strategist, with operational experience in Iraq. Askew recently defended his PhD in military history at Texas A&M University.

Antonio Salinas is an active duty Army officer and PhD student in the Department of History at Georgetown University. Following his coursework, he will teach at the National Intelligence University. Salinas has twenty-six years of military service in the Marine Corps and the US Army, where he led soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is the author of Siren’s Song: The Allure of War and Boot Camp: The Making of a United States Marine.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Lance Cpl. Hunter J. Kuester, US Marine Corps

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Mark Askew · March 21, 2025

23. How the Trump Administration Can Limit China’s Arms Exports

Conclusion

While China’s arms sales abroad are modest compared to the United States, its aspirations are not. Chinese leaders and defense experts assume they need to secure external customers to drive growth. The United States needs a comprehensive strategy to not only compete with China in the Indo-Pacific, but globally. Besides expanding the U.S. defense-industrial base, Washington can limit China’s arms sales through a balance of carrots and sticks. An approach that continues to leverage America’s strength in the global arms market, coordinates export strategies with willing partner countries when the U.S. position is diminished, and issues clear warnings to purchasers of Chinese weapons and equipment is an effective approach for stunting Beijing’s growth as an arms exporter.

How the Trump Administration Can Limit China’s Arms Exports - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Grant Rumley · March 21, 2025

Russia’s full-scale assault on Ukraine has altered the global arms market in ways not seen since the end of the Cold War, creating challenges and opportunities for arms exporters and importers alike. Russian arms exports are down, global defense spending is up, and alternative arms exporters are keen to take advantage of this new market reality. For countries that previously relied on Russia to equip their militaries, these are perilous times. Some have complained about a lack of spare parts while others have been asked to sell back kit to Moscow. One beneficiary of this new dynamic is China, which can offer legacy purchasers of Russian kit options from a similar family of equipment. And Beijing has ample motivation to capitalize on this turn of events, as increasing arms revenue is key to China’s goal of military modernization.

The United States should take this new reality into account and use a combination of bilateral and multilateral tools to limit China’s growth as an arms exporter. Doing so requires a two-pronged approach: focus on curtailing China’s ability to produce and export quality arms, while increasing pressure on countries considering buying Chinese weapons. The latter requires Washington to take a holistic view to arms transfers. U.S. arms sales have increased exponentially since 2022, but the limits of its defense-industrial base means Washington simply cannot answer the demands of every customer. When the United States is not best positioned to box China out, it should look to allies and partners to pick up the slack.

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China’s Small But Growing Role as an Arms Exporter

In 2019, the U.S. Department of Defense described China as the fastest growing arms exporter of the previous 15 years. While its overall market share remains limited, China has cemented itself as a top five global arms exporter, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, behind the United States, Russia, and France. China has exported arms to nearly 40 countries in the past two decades, with the main recipients being Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Algeria. Beijing’s leading exports are aircraft, ships, armored vehicles, missiles, and air defense systems.

In recent years, China has enthusiastically pursued new arms markets across the globe. In 2020, Serbia purchased an advanced Chinese air defense system. marking the first major sale to a European country in years. In 2021, Beijing began aggressively marketing its JF-17 fighter jet to Argentina. At the 2024 World Defense Show in Saudi Arabia, China sent nearly 40 arms firms to participate for the first time under one banner, dubbed “China Defense.” Chinese pilots also demonstrated the J-10 fighter jet at the show. At the Egypt Air Show in September 2024, Chinese pilots again flew the J-10 as well as the Y-20 transport jet. This was reportedly the first time the J-10 was demonstrated in Africa and the first time the Y-20 was demonstrated abroad.

Like other major arms exporters, China’s arms sales trajectory has mirrored its military modernization. As countries develop and field more equipment, they tend to look to sell excess or older platforms to drive revenue growth and future modernization efforts, a reality that is heightened in times of great-power competition, as Keith Carter of the U.S. Naval War College has noted. The platforms China has marketed in recent years echo this pattern. As China’s indigenous fighter jet production capabilities have evolved, Beijing has pushed more of its older and less sophisticated fighters to the market. For years, China’s main fighter jet export was the JF-17, which it co-produced with Pakistan and sold to Myanmar, Nigeria, and Iraq. In 2022, however, China sold its indigenously produced J-10 multi-role fighter jet to Pakistan in its first-ever export of the new model. Rumors are swirling that Egypt, which had previously walked away from a purchase of Russian Su-35 fighter jets, is finalizing a deal for J-10s with China. Elsewhere, the United Arab Emirates in 2022 purchased the Chinese L-15 trainer jet, a sale that has reportedly intrigued Moroccan officials.

Beijing tends to be a shrewd marketer of its weaponry. It understands that many countries choose not to buy significant quantities from China due to political reasons. So Beijing offers terms with flexible payments, often at a lower price point and with fewer restrictions in place than other Western suppliers. In the Middle East, Chinese officials accurately noticed a gap in the market left by the biggest external supplier, the United States. Despite its overwhelming market share as an arms exporter to the region, Washington has to date withheld select platforms such as armed drones from its Arab partners, despite repeated requests. Jordan’s King Abdullah II, for instance, had routinely asked the United States for armed MQ-1 drones to help patrol his borders at the height of the campaign against the Islamic State in 2015. When the United States denied that request the same year, Jordan bought CH-4 armed drones from China instead. In fact, Chinese armed drones have sprouted up across the region, including among traditional U.S. customers such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt.

The U.S. Toolkit for Limiting China’s Arms Exports

Countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East have been the primary buyers of Chinese arms exports. To prevent Beijing from expanding its reach, the Trump administration should consider two main lines of effort. The first — and more obvious — method is to go after the supplier.

The Trump administration can continue to try to stymie the development of China’s defense-industrial base through a wide range of sanctions and other economic tools. The first Trump administration issued Executive Order 13959 in November 2020, which prohibited any transactions in publicly traded securities with Chinese military companies. This was followed by the Biden administration’s Executive Order 14032 the following June, which echoed the Trump administration’s order in banning the purchase or trade of any securities to companies that “operate or have operated in the defense and related materiel sector or the surveillance technology sector of the economy of the PRC [People’s Republic of China].” Through the Department of Commerce, the Biden administration likewise issued a series of increasing restrictions on the sale or transfer of advanced computer chips to China to limit, in part, the development of China’s defense-industrial base. Under Biden, the United States also sanctioned Chinese military firms accused of supporting Russia’s war against Ukraine. Other efforts have languished in Congress, however, such as the bipartisan Chinese Military and Surveillance Company Sanctions Act of 2023 and the Comprehensive Outbound Investment National Security Act of 2024, both of which seek to limit further U.S.-origin financial assets supporting the Chinese defense industry.

The second line of effort limit Chinese arms exports is targeting the customer. By going after customers and potential recipients of Chinese materiel, the United States can try to shrink the market space for Beijing. Doing so could feature a delicate balance between carrots and sticks. The former was a feature of the first Trump administration’s energetic arms transfer policies. Arms sales were a key fixture in President Donald Trump’s foreign policy agenda. The White House famously overrode congressional efforts to stop a multi-billion dollar arms deal with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in 2019. By the end of the administration, the State Department was taking additional steps to expand the number of platforms ready for export, such as announcing a revision to the Missile Technology Control Regime, thereby opening up the potential to sell armed drones to more countries. This enabled offering the Emiratis MQ-9 armed drones in 2020, which would have made the United Arab Emirates the first Arab country to receive the U.S. platform. That deal ultimately fell through in part due to revelations of the Emiratis’ growing security ties with China.

Not all of the carrots the Trump administration can offer have to be U.S.-made, however. In this new global arms market, ramping up domestic production — as both the Biden and Trump administrations desired — will not be enough to meet the demand of every partner. But that shouldn’t always be the goal. Boxing out China from a lucrative contract should be the top priority, and if the United States isn’t the best-equipped supplier to meet the demand then Washington should coordinate with its allies and partners to see who is. Allies such as France, the United Kingdom, and Italy are established major arms exporters, while others like Israel and South Korea are ascendant on the international arms market. Some have already faced off with China: South Korea’s FA-50 light attack fighter jet beat out China’s JF-17 for Malaysia’s roughly billion-dollar deal in 2023. When the United States cannot meet the demand of a potential buyer, Washington should get creative to ensure China cannot either.

Of course, the Trump administration has plenty of potential sticks to deter would-be purchasers of Chinese kit. One such option could be expanding the existing authorities the United States has in countering Russian arms exports abroad. In 2017, Congress passed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, which imposed a litany of restrictions against Iran, North Korea, and Russia. The law included a section requiring the president to impose sanctions on any person that engages in a “significant transaction with a person that is part of, or operates for or on behalf of, the defense or intelligence sectors” of Russia. Under the act, sanctions were levied against Turkey in 2020 after Ankara purchased the Russian S-400 air defense system. There are no similar clauses regarding transactions with China’s defense or intelligence sectors in the current law. The Trump administration and Congress could consider amending the existing legislation to include such deals with China.

In addition, the U.S. government could initiate an interagency effort to further limit China’s arms exports. As a first step, the Defense Department and the intelligence community should establish a common understanding of the likeliest Chinese platforms to appear on the global arms market in the near future. This could manifest in an annual classified assessment of the current Chinese weapons and equipment on the market, their technical aspects and capabilities, and any security concerns regarding their potential to collect intelligence on U.S. assets. The assessment would also include the latest intelligence on Chinese platforms being developed and readied for export. Thereafter, the State and Defense Departments could compile information from the security cooperation offices at U.S. embassies worldwide to identify Chinese customers and formulate a strategy to proactively dissuade potential purchases.

From a buyer’s perspective, Chinese weapons can be appealing for a variety of reasons, including generally lower costs, faster delivery times, and looser restrictions on use. However, many potential customers are either unaware of or agnostic about the second- and third-order effects that are unique to buying Chinese kit. Consequences can range from a lack of accompanying training materials (some arms sales come with instructions only in Chinese) to a lack of back-end maintenance support. For example, Iraq had to sideline its entire fleet of CH-4 drones during its campaign against the Islamic State because China was late in sending spare parts. U.S. engagement with would-be customers of Chinese equipment that is consistent and transparent in warning of the possible pitfalls of such a deal can go a long way in dissuading a potential purchase.

Conclusion

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Grant Rumley is the Meisel Goldberger Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He served as a policy advisor in the Office of the Secretary of Defense during the Trump and Biden administrations.

Image: N509FZ via Wikimedia Commons.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Grant Rumley · March 21, 2025

24. The Chinese Communist Party’s Grey Zone Paradigm

Excerpt:

The CCP’s grey zone practices have often gone hand-in-hand with information operations and cyberattacks, which have increasingly aligned with Russian operations, to strategically bolster Beijing’s narratives and disrupt trust in public institutions globally, while it undertakes illegal measures in pursuit of its strategic objectives. According to the National Security Bureau in Taiwan, the PRC distributed 60 percent more pieces of false or biased information in 2024 than the previous year, for a total of 2.16 million pieces. In the context of the CCP’s grey zone tactics, these operations often serve to erode trust in established media and democratic institutions, and to frame its actions as legitimate, complicating the believability and strength of opposition narratives.

The Chinese Communist Party’s Grey Zone Paradigm - The Soufan Center

thesoufancenter.org · by Gaby Tejeda · March 19, 2025

March 19, 2025

Taiwan Coast Guard via AP

Bottom Line Up Front

Over the past decade, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has increasingly relied on actions in the so-called “grey zone” – those that fall between the traditional binary of war and peace – to achieve its objectives and spread its influence.
Grey zone tactics augment China’s more muscular approach, especially though not exclusively in the maritime and economic domains.
In the South China Sea, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has strategically employed a mix of coercion, legal warfare, kinetic tactics, and narrative warfare to bolster its territorial and economic claims.
The CCP’s grey zone practices have often gone hand-in-hand with information operations and cyberattacks.

Over the past decade, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has increasingly relied on actions in the so-called “grey zone” — competitive interaction among and with state and non-state actors that fall between the traditional binary of war and peace — to achieve its objectives and spread its influence. In other words, grey zone tactics are nonmilitary coercive actions spanning diplomatic, economic, and security measures that the PRC uses to leverage its interests and gain an advantage in strategic competition with other nations.

Beijing, like Moscow, is comfortable operating in this space, while the United States lags. In the South China Sea and elsewhere, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has attempted to assert its territorial claims and use a range of hybrid tactics to advance its foreign policy agenda, all without provoking a military response. For the CCP, much of how it operates, especially in Asia, is viewed predominantly through a political lens, with military aspects secondary in many cases. The grey zone is considered a subset of the CCP’s approach to political warfare. As the PRC grows in economic and military power, it sees itself as the natural hegemon in Asia and has allocated the resources necessary to make this a reality. Grey zone tactics augment China’s more muscular approach, especially –– though not exclusively –– in the maritime domain, with some of its neighbors in the region primarily targeted.

New footage showing special barges deployed at Zhanjiang, China, in what appears to be an over-the-shore logistics exercise, highlights the ongoing preparations by the PRC for a potential military invasion of Taiwan, a scenario that Beijing has war-gamed for many years. The latest logistics exercise seemed to simulate a situation in which the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) secures a beachhead on Taiwanese territory and then uses these barges to bring heavy military equipment ashore. While this latest development underscores the ongoing military preparations by the PLA, the CCP has simultaneously ramped up its grey zone methods both in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond, as a method of pursuing both its foreign policy objectives.

By incrementally leveraging coercive means that fall below the threshold of what would likely spark a military response by the United States or its allies, the CCP has sought to alter the regional status quo in its favor and bolster its status as a global superpower without triggering open conflict, while at the same time preparing for such a possibility. Its grey zone doctrine has been both incremental and multifaceted, combining activities in the economic, military, cyber, and information domains and incrementally applying pressure through non-military tactics before resorting to kinetic action. The incremental nature of Beijing’s approach is sometimes described as “salami-slicing,” wherein China takes over territory in a gradual manner, tests thresholds, and then ultimately makes its expansion a fait accompli. In this sense, Russia and China watch each other closely to monitor what works, what doesn’t, and why, using these lessons learned to drive adaptation.

In the South China Sea, the CCP has strategically employed a mix of coercion, legal warfare, kinetic tactics, and narrative warfare to bolster its territorial and economic claims. A notable example occurred in 2024 when China’s Coast Guard and maritime militia vessels blocked Philippine resupply missions to the BRP Sierra Madre, a Philippine Navy vessel stationed near the Second Thomas Shoal. This shoal has long been a flashpoint in regional tensions due to its proximity to significant, yet largely untapped, oil and gas reserves. Although the shoal lies within Philippine territorial waters, China asserts historical rights to the area, citing its "nine-dash line," which claims vast swathes of the South China Sea, including resources and activities within these disputed waters. A UN arbitration under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) ruled in favor of the Philippines and that China’s claims to historic rights and resources within the “nine-dash line” have no legal basis. When an agreement to diffuse tensions was reached, China shifted its focus to the Scarborough and Sabina Shoals. Grey zone tactics in the maritime domain have included ramming and boarding boats, but also legal warfare such as in May 2024, when the CCP announced it would authorize the China Coast Guard to detain foreign vessels and people in waters it considered within its jurisdiction, as per the 2021 China Coast Guard Law.

In the airspace around Taiwan, the PRC has leveraged a series of grey zone tactics, designed to assert the CCP’s territorial claims and ensure deference from other nations by flexing its military muscles. Throughout 2024, the PRC has tested the boundaries of Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZ), the airspace a country monitors for aircraft it permits to use its airspace for security purposes. In January 2024, the PRC stationed four PLA Navy warships around Taiwan, which have been deployed near the border of China’s ADIZ which it declared unilaterally over much of the East China Sea. In December 2024, the PLA conducted large-scale aviation and naval exercises in the air and sea space around Taiwan, shortly after Taiwan President Lai Ching-te visited allies in the region.

As part of its grey zone tactics, China has also employed a strategy of economic ‘carrots and sticks’. Through a mix of economic coercion and inducements, China has sought to influence other countries to act in accordance with the CCP’s interests. Its coercive practices have, for example, entailed trade restrictions in response to territorial disputes in the South China Sea against Vietnam and the Philippines. It has also included hovering with patrols, alongside fishing fleets that serve as de facto patrol vessels, to disrupt the economic activities of neighbors, such as Malaysia's oil and gas exploration near Luconia Shoals. Through its maritime tactics, China also sought to infringe upon the Exclusive Economic Zone of Indonesia in 2024.

The CCP’s grey zone practices have often gone hand-in-hand with information operations and cyberattacks, which have increasingly aligned with Russian operations, to strategically bolster Beijing’s narratives and disrupt trust in public institutions globally, while it undertakes illegal measures in pursuit of its strategic objectives. According to the National Security Bureau in Taiwan, the PRC distributed 60 percent more pieces of false or biased information in 2024 than the previous year, for a total of 2.16 million pieces. In the context of the CCP’s grey zone tactics, these operations often serve to erode trust in established media and democratic institutions, and to frame its actions as legitimate, complicating the believability and strength of opposition narratives.

thesoufancenter.org · by Gaby Tejeda · March 19, 2025

25. Drones are Changing the Face of War

Conclusion:

Drone technological advances have created a powerful weapon that needs to be better understood in terms of its implications not only for the U.S., but regarding their use by bad actors as well. America must be ready for it. The US is currently the world’s leader in the production of capable multi-purpose military drones. Given their coming greater proliferation internationally, it would be merely prudent to remain on top. Drones are clearly changing the face of war.

Drones are Changing the Face of War

special-ops.org · by Robert Bruce Adolph · March 19, 2025

Drones are here to stay. Their use is a heated topic of discussion in the U.S., and with good reason. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), otherwise known as drones, are fast becoming a major component of our nation’s military arsenal. However, such technology is spreading internationally. Several countries are in the process of either purchasing drones or learning how to manufacture them. Many soldiers, scientists and scholars claim that drones will revolutionize the way wars are conducted. They are not wrong. But how remains an open and pressing question.

The U.S. has used drones successfully for years for intelligence, target acquisition and offensive operations. Their technology continues to advance rapidly. The US RQ-4 Global Hawk is frankly the best aerial surveillance and reconnaissance platform ever devised. The MQ-9 Reaper, likewise, is a superb multi-purpose unmanned attack aircraft. Drones are now capable of carrying out a great variety of missions. They can cover hundreds of miles in short order and remain aloft for sustained periods, called loiter time. The American Switchblade drone is a munition that can literally fit in a backpack. Sometimes, smaller is better.

Drones have greatly increased the capabilities of the American military. Most importantly, they can be used for the accurate targeting of enemies without placing U.S. troops in harm’s way. Furthermore, they can offer a greater payload than traditional manned aircraft, with the ability to carry multiple precision-guided munitions.

Drones are also less expensive than traditional military aircraft, making them easier to produce and deploy. This fact along with the low risk of casualties makes them a much less politically and financially demanding alternative. As a result, drones played critically important roles in Iraq, Afghanistan and more recently in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. They will continue to do so in future conflicts for the same reasons.

The greater use of drones will inevitably lead to a shift in the mindset of nations. Russian use of Iranian-made drones in Ukraine provides merely one example. Since Russia’s army has proven itself incompetent, drones have provided the Kremlin a low-cost means of attack — maintaining the pressure on President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people.

For its part, Ukraine has in several ways pioneered the use of drones. Out-manned and out-gunned by the Russians in the early war, the field-expedient use of off-the-shelf drones was able to help their military level the playing field. One Russian soldier reportedly surrendered to a drone.

Outside of the conflict in Ukraine, drones can also be used to conduct preemptive strikes on various opposing nations’ facilities and military installations without risking a brutal retaliatory strike via “plausible deniability.” A rogue nation or substate actor, like a terrorist organization, can simply deny it was them. Explosive drones leave little in the way of forensic evidence regarding their places of manufacture and battlefield points of origin.

Moreover, drones are devilishly difficult to defend against. Because they are small relative to more traditional weaponry like manned aircraft, their reduced radar cross section and diminished heat signatures make targeting them with missiles challenging.

The drastically reduced cost and limited destructive capability associated with drone warfare will also have an impact on strategic decision-making. Nations may be more likely to enter limited conflicts with targeted drone strikes that result in minimal relative destruction, thinking to avoid full-scale military conflicts. Such thinking could reduce the number of casualties and lead to greater stability in some parts of the world, or it could lead to conflagrations. Nobody knows for certain.

New weapons create nascent and often unexpected outcomes. So, not all implications of drone warfare are potentially beneficial. In addition, they are as susceptible to malfunction as any other device. Drones will be used in future by terrorist groups, rogue nations and dictatorships to attack their enemies, perhaps even us. They are, after all, both cheap and effective — the ultimate military two-fer.

Drone technological advances have created a powerful weapon that needs to be better understood in terms of its implications not only for the U.S., but regarding their use by bad actors as well. America must be ready for it. The US is currently the world’s leader in the production of capable multi-purpose military drones. Given their coming greater proliferation internationally, it would be merely prudent to remain on top. Drones are clearly changing the face of war.

This piece, updated and revised, originally appeared in the Tampa Bay Times under a different title.

special-ops.org · by Robert Bruce Adolph · March 19, 2025

26. Conquest Is Back – A Peace Deal in Ukraine Could Further Normalize What Was Once Taboo

Excerpts:

The permanent decline of the norm—and the disorder that could follow its demise—is not a foregone conclusion. A more transactional understanding of territory, along the lines of Trump’s proposals for the United States to purchase Greenland, develop Gaza, and renegotiate rights to the Panama Canal, is unlikely to replace it. People’s attachment to their homelands and the pull of forces such as nationalism are too strong, and pursuing deals that ignore both could invite large-scale, violent pushback.

Even if the United States abdicates its traditional enforcement role, other key powers that benefit from the relative peace the norm enables could step in. China, for example, rose to power within the institutional architecture of the postwar international order and has always zealously guarded its own sovereignty. It is possible that China could take a page from U.S. history and chart a similar trajectory of territorial expansion followed by global leadership. Beijing might first take advantage of the norm’s relative weakness to satisfy its territorial ambitions by absorbing Taiwan and cementing its island and maritime claims in the South and East China Seas. But afterward, it might seek to enforce some restrictions on conquest—still allowing limited interference in other countries, but threatening an economic or military response to those who engage in territorial aggression, especially in China’s own region, to prevent the kind of disorder that would undermine its economic and security interests. Such behavior would be hypocritical, but sovereignty norms have always been shot through with hypocrisy; witness the repeated foreign interventions by the United States, long these norms’ most important champion.

Still, any move toward a watered down or distorted version of the current norm against territorial conquest would lead to a rise in conflict over land. Since World War II, many countries have grown accustomed to and benefited greatly from the relative stability of the U.S.-led order and the respect for territorial sovereignty it enforces. It is difficult to pinpoint how far the system could unravel if current constraints on territorial conquest continue to erode. But weak and strong countries alike will surely miss the norm when it’s gone.

Conquest Is Back

Foreign Affairs · by More by Tanisha M. Fazal · March 21, 2025

A Peace Deal in Ukraine Could Further Normalize What Was Once Taboo

Tanisha M. Fazal

March 21, 2025

Near a frontline trench in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, April 2024 Thomas Peter / Reuters

TANISHA M. FAZAL is Arleen C. Carlson Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota and the author of State Death: The Politics and Geography of Conquest, Occupation, and Annexation.

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The norm against territorial conquest is a pillar of the post–1945 international order, but that pillar is now crumbling. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is certainly the most egregious recent violation of this prohibition—an outlier, as an attempt to capture an entire sovereign country. Yet if Moscow gets to walk away with pieces of Ukrainian territory, and particularly if that transfer wins international recognition, other powers may be more tempted to wage wars of conquest.

States have never consistently complied with the rule, enshrined in the UN Charter in response to Nazi Germany’s swallowing other countries whole during World War II, that proscribed the forcible seizure of another state’s territory. But it was broadly observed until fairly recently. Argentina was swiftly ejected from the Falkland Islands after its invasion in 1982 by the combined force of the British military and a UN Security Council resolution. After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, a U.S.-led and UN-approved coalition stepped in to restore Kuwait’s sovereignty. When Russia attacked Crimea in 2014, however, outside powers failed to fully enforce the norm. Many countries protested, but Crimea’s transfer to Russia has become a de facto reality. And this time, after Russia’s full-scale invasion, the world’s increasingly mixed reaction to such a blatant assault has clearly signaled the degrading strength of the norm.

Norms die slowly. Attempted land grabs as big and brazen as Russia’s in 2022 are likely to remain rare, at least for now. But as aggressors go more or less unpunished, states may increasingly act on territorial claims in murky jurisdictions—those least likely to trigger a significant international response. These small-scale attacks may prove most damaging to the norm against territorial conquest. As violence ticks up, the larger web of rules and institutions that make up the international system could begin to come undone. Although far from inevitable, the norm’s demise would leave the world in dangerous terrain.

HEALTH CHECK

Judge the health of a norm in international relations by the actions and statements of countries responding to violations. Immediately after Russia’s incursion in February 2022, many countries spoke out in defense of the prohibition against territorial conquest. But that outrage has become more muted in the years since. Although the European Union, the United States, and their allies have applied forceful and consistent sanctions on Russia, many countries have maintained normal relations with Moscow. Under the Trump administration, Washington’s continued participation in the sanctions regime is now in doubt.

On Russia’s war in Ukraine, the court of global public opinion is increasingly mixed. European populations are generally supportive of Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion—the fear that Russia could target other European countries next gives them a clear interest in preserving the norm against territorial conquest. But even in Europe, support for fighting until Ukraine’s losses are fully reversed may be waning. And in the United States, where President Donald Trump has signaled that he is less committed to Ukraine’s survival than his predecessor, Joe Biden, concerns about Ukraine in particular and preserving norms about sovereignty in general are not as salient as they are in Europe. Recent polling shows increasing support, especially among Republicans, for ending the war in Ukraine even if doing so means Ukraine must cede territory to Russia.

Many outside the West were horrified by Russia’s 2022 invasion. Martin Kimani, then Kenya’s ambassador to the UN, spoke at a UN Security Council session a few days before Russia’s February 2022 invasion and condemned “irredentism and expansionism” and the wilting of international norms “under the relentless assault of the powerful.” But many commentators in the global South have also criticized Europe and the United States for taking a selective approach to norm enforcement; many Western countries that have pushed back against Russia’s assault on Ukraine have violated state sovereignty themselves in the not-so-distant past, such as in the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, or turned a blind eye to other violations of international law, such as in their support for Israel’s war in Gaza. Inconsistent responses to various breaches of sovereignty—beyond just territorial conquest—can undermine all of these interrelated norms. Norms lose their potency, after all, when they do not keep powerful states from doing what they want.

Still, the fact that states feel obliged to invoke the norm against territorial conquest even as they violate it indicates that there is life in the norm yet. Russian President Vladimir Putin argued that Ukraine was not a real state, which would mean the prohibition would not apply. Beijing, similarly, claims that Taiwan has always been part of China, and Israel does not recognize Palestinian statehood. Rwandan President Paul Kagame has used the M23 rebel group as a front to make territorial incursions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo while insisting that Rwanda is not involved in the conflict and that its interests are purely defensive. Venezuela’s 2023 referendum on taking Guyanese territory invoked decades-old international agreements to support its claim while ignoring other, more recent rulings by the International Court of Justice that rejected it. Even Trump’s statements about the United States buying Greenland, renegotiating rights to the Panama Canal, seizing Gaza to develop it, and making Canada the 51st state seem to favor transactional arrangements over coercion. But Trump’s refusal to rule out the use of force, and the United States’ refusal to name Russia as the aggressor in Ukraine in a recent G-7 resolution and in UN votes, are worrying steps in the wrong direction. If and when states stop invoking the norm against territorial conquest or rationalizing their actions in ways that indicate at least a shallow allegiance to it, the norm will have died. Bolder and more frequent territorial aggression could follow.

DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS

Nibbling around the edges of countries may be more damaging to the norm against territorial conquest than trying to swallow them in a single bite. Compare the global response to Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea with the response to its full-scale attack in 2022. Both clearly violated the norm. In 2014, the world’s reaction was relatively weak: the seizure was condemned in principle, but apart from sanctions there was little material pushback against Russia, and even today few expect a settlement to return Crimea to Ukraine. By normalizing limited, if still brazen, territorial conquests, the halfhearted response may have paved the way for Moscow’s invasion in 2022. In this case, the world reacted more strongly precisely because Russia’s claims extended to an entire state—a glaring, indisputable violation of the norm. Now consider a counterfactual scenario, in which Russia attacked only the Donbas region of Ukraine in 2022. The outcome, in terms of territorial control, might not have been much different from the likely outcome of the full-scale war, with Russia ending up with the Donbas and Ukraine surviving in truncated form. But Moscow’s smaller-scale land grab probably would not have triggered as vigorous an international response. If norms are only as strong as the world’s reaction to a transgression, a more limited Russian invasion would have set the norm against conquest on a more certain, if slower, path of erosion.

Even so, any transfer of Ukrainian territory to Russia will further normalize territorial conquest. The harm could be minimized if the transfer were unofficial, with a frozen conflict giving eastern Ukraine a status similar to that of Abkhazia and South Ossetia—territories that Russia controls but most of the world considers to be part of Georgia. Just as likely, however, is a transfer of territory that comes with at least some international recognition. An agreement between the United States and Russia that sidelines Ukraine, or even a European-brokered truce that includes a promise of security guarantees for what remains of independent Ukraine, could effectively legitimize the division of Ukrainian territory. Not only would the forcible territorial transfer be sanctioned, but it would also be happening with the approval of the United States, one of the norm’s historic champions.

The outcome of one war will not decide the norm’s fate, and a full revival of territorial conquest will not happen overnight. In other words, states are not likely to suddenly start making claims as bold as Russia’s in Ukraine. But as the international environment becomes more permissive of territorial claims, revisionist states may test boundaries with smaller-scale moves against weaker targets. Azerbaijan’s 2023 takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh, which elicited a minimal global response, is one recent example. Next, Sudan could seize the Amhara region of Ethiopia. China could adopt a more aggressive posture in the South and East China Seas. Venezuela is already claiming large swaths of Guyana, and it could act more forcefully on those claims. The Palestinian territories, Taiwan, Western Sahara, and other polities that are not broadly recognized as sovereign states will be especially vulnerable. Even more worrying is the possibility of escalation in border conflicts among nuclear-armed states, such as China, India, and Pakistan.

As aggressors go unpunished, states may increasingly act on territorial claims.

Looking further ahead, if the norm against conquest continues to erode and countries no longer fear major reprisals for territorial aggression, threats that seem distant or far-fetched now could become real possibilities. Buffer states—those geographically located between rival countries—would be especially vulnerable to attack. Through the middle of the twentieth century, Poland was trampled and carved apart by wars between bigger powers. Today, other former Soviet satellite or socialist republics, stuck between NATO and an increasingly revanchist Russia, could face a fate similar to Ukraine’s. If Chinese-Russian relations turn sour, Mongolia, too, could be at risk, as neither of its more powerful neighbors will have any assurance that the other won’t act first to take over the state that separates them. Nepal and Bhutan, likewise, lie in precarious positions between China and India. Kuwait could once again be in danger, situated as it is between the regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Related norms could also start to weaken. If territorial conquest is back on the table, states will be less likely to respect other elements of sovereignty, such as maritime rights. When small island states claim fishing and mining rights in exclusive economic zones, other countries in the region may simply ignore their claims. Might will disregard right. Violations of political sovereignty, from election meddling to regime change, may become not only more frequent but also more overt. Such breaches have always occurred, but norms have somewhat contained them and provided some recourse for weaker states. If the powerful no longer respect the rules, they undermine social restrictions on acts of violence against institutions, land, and people.

The erosion of the norm against territorial conquest could even precipitate a broader shift in an international system that is built on relations between sovereign states. Several challenges to sovereignty already loom, such as the threat posed by climate change to small island nations, or the way technology companies have assumed the communication, diplomatic, and military roles once reserved to governments. The return of territorial conquest would add to these pressures. If the survival of a state threatened by an aggressor is increasingly in doubt, that state’s ability to strike security and economic agreements will decline as well. And if state sovereignty becomes broadly precarious, it is not clear how the open markets that underpin the globalized order will operate. Conquest, furthermore, is fundamentally incompatible with democracy. Many tenets of the liberal international order cannot survive in the absence of the norm against territorial conquest. Perhaps that is the point.

PERMANENT DECLINE?

The norm against territorial conquest has undergirded U.S. power for the past eight decades, stabilizing the international system and enabling the United States to build a web of enduring alliances and to prosper from trade that is largely undisturbed by conflict. But it has not served all countries well. The norm itself rests on troubling foundations—its strongest proponents imposed rules on the rest of the world after centuries of colonialism in which they redrew borders at will, and in the decades since they have repeatedly flouted their own rules and violated the sovereignty of weaker states. Weaker countries also suffer most as a result of the perverse incentives the norm produces. Knowing that their borders are largely secure, avaricious leaders can divert resources to internal security and repression while they plunder state coffers, creating the conditions for instability, civil war, and state failure.

Yet the norm against territorial conquest has also held in check the cruelty that accompanies wars of annexation. As the political scientist Alexander Downes has shown, armies deployed to take territory often target civilians, too. The brutality of Russian forces in Ukraine and deportations carried out by Azerbaijani forces in Nagorno-Karabakh are only the most recent examples. Conquest may involve ethnic cleansing, as illustrated in the recent U.S. proposal, supported by Israel, to empty the Gaza Strip and move its population to nearby countries. At a basic level, conquest ignores the will of local populations; Western Guyanese do not wish to be part of Venezuela, just as Ukrainians do not want to join Russia.

Norms lose their potency when they do not keep powerful states from doing what they want.

The permanent decline of the norm—and the disorder that could follow its demise—is not a foregone conclusion. A more transactional understanding of territory, along the lines of Trump’s proposals for the United States to purchase Greenland, develop Gaza, and renegotiate rights to the Panama Canal, is unlikely to replace it. People’s attachment to their homelands and the pull of forces such as nationalism are too strong, and pursuing deals that ignore both could invite large-scale, violent pushback.

Even if the United States abdicates its traditional enforcement role, other key powers that benefit from the relative peace the norm enables could step in. China, for example, rose to power within the institutional architecture of the postwar international order and has always zealously guarded its own sovereignty. It is possible that China could take a page from U.S. history and chart a similar trajectory of territorial expansion followed by global leadership. Beijing might first take advantage of the norm’s relative weakness to satisfy its territorial ambitions by absorbing Taiwan and cementing its island and maritime claims in the South and East China Seas. But afterward, it might seek to enforce some restrictions on conquest—still allowing limited interference in other countries, but threatening an economic or military response to those who engage in territorial aggression, especially in China’s own region, to prevent the kind of disorder that would undermine its economic and security interests. Such behavior would be hypocritical, but sovereignty norms have always been shot through with hypocrisy; witness the repeated foreign interventions by the United States, long these norms’ most important champion.

Still, any move toward a watered down or distorted version of the current norm against territorial conquest would lead to a rise in conflict over land. Since World War II, many countries have grown accustomed to and benefited greatly from the relative stability of the U.S.-led order and the respect for territorial sovereignty it enforces. It is difficult to pinpoint how far the system could unravel if current constraints on territorial conquest continue to erode. But weak and strong countries alike will surely miss the norm when it’s gone.

TANISHA M. FAZAL is Arleen C. Carlson Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota and the author of State Death: The Politics and Geography of Conquest, Occupation, and Annexation.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Tanisha M. Fazal · March 21, 2025

27. For European envoys in DC, a new chill from Trump’s Pentagon

What impact will this have on our military FAO community both in Washington and at our embassies around the world?

We need America First, Allies Always.

Despite all the negative rhetoric, our allies have always been the secret source to our Superpower status and are what allow the US to project power and operate around the world to protect US interests.

For European envoys in DC, a new chill from Trump’s Pentagon

Defense News · by Noah Robertson · March 21, 2025

Over his years in Washington, a European defense official — granted anonymity to speak freely — grew used to a certain warmth from his American counterparts.

He gave the Air Force’s annual conference as an example. Every year he went, the speakers thanked U.S. allies for their help, and at least one U.S. officer approached him with a question: “What can we do for you?”

That changed this month, at the same conference in Aurora, Colorado. The scarce crowd in attendance barely mentioned American allies, the official noted. No one asked him what he needed.

For many Europeans either visiting or posted to Washington, moments of comity are becoming scarcer as the second Trump administration rapidly alters America’s 75-year military role in Europe.

Officials described struggling to get meetings with their Pentagon counterparts, including longtime contacts. At the same time, in private conversations, American defense officials are delivering abrupt changes in policy, from a drop in American forces on the continent to a lack of interest in having them counter China in the Pacific. The shift has many European officials wondering who they should listen to, and what is the Pentagon’s new strategy.

“It feels like the task is not to promote European allies and NATO but to ensure a U.S. withdrawal with minimum fuss,” said a second European defense official.

This story is based on interviews with half a dozen European officials, all of whom were allowed to speak anonymously to avoid becoming a target of the Trump administration. They described the personal effect of a new chill felt from the Pentagon toward Europe, one that is already causing their governments to doubt America’s commitment to them, and in turn their commitment to America.

Warning signs

The warning signs for Europe under the second Trump administration came early. The president has long been skeptical of America’s role in NATO and accused European partners of free-riding off U.S. military power. That rhetoric hardened when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth traveled to the alliance’s headquarters in February.

“Leaders of our European allies should take primary responsibility for defense of the continent,” he said, arguing they should spend closer to 5% of GDP on defense.

In private, some on the continent welcomed the lecture. A record 23 of NATO’s 32 members now spend the alliance’s 2% floor of GDP on defense, but Europe would still struggle to defend itself without American assistance — a problem clear to many of the countries in the east.

What no country in the alliance wants, though, is American abandonment, something Europeans began to fear two weeks after Hegseth’s speech.

In late February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the Oval Office to sign an agreement trading natural resources for U.S. military support. It ended up in a shouting match, with Trump and Vice President JD Vance berating him for a perceived lack of gratitude.

The U.S. paused military and intelligence support for Ukraine days later, a suspension that lasted a week.

Trump had threatened such steps before but largely avoided acting on them in his first term. The pause made it clear to many in Europe that this time was different, said Max Bergmann, who studies European security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“It [created] the sense that the U.S. is walking away, and may not be on our side,” Bergmann said, describing European sentiments.

For many Europeans inside or visiting Washington, Zelenskyy’s visit has come to represent a growing sense of alienation they feel from the U.S., especially from the Pentagon.

Several defense officials from the continent described having much more difficulty getting meetings with counterparts in the Defense Department, even with long-term contacts. Some said their counterparts were now having to get approval from supervisors before gathering casually, say for coffee or lunch.

Others who have secured meetings reported stiff discussions in which U.S. officials stuck closely to prepared talking points, despite at times outlining sharp changes in policy.

After years of courting allies to take the threat of China more seriously, the Pentagon is now discouraging Europeans from getting more involved in the Pacific. Countries such as Britain and Germany that join U.S.-led military drills around Asia haven’t yet been disinvited, the officials said, while noting that they still saw it as a possibility. Instead, the message now is that Europe should focus almost solely on its own security.

“[There is] no demand signal from the U.S. for the Europeans to be involved in the Pacific,” the second official said.

Meanwhile, Europeans are also preparing for a drastic change in America’s military posture on the continent. Pentagon officials have previewed a drawdown in private, though they haven’t specified which units will depart, except to say it will likely involve the 20,000 troops the Biden administration surged to Europe after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Several top policy officials now in the Pentagon have previously argued that the U.S. military is over-committed in Europe and should shift forces toward Asia, to better deter China.

The Defense Department did not respond to a request for comment.

‘Buy European’

That said, some European officials are struggling to discern the signal from the noise, hearing different things from different parts of the administration. Their confusion is part of a larger issue many allies are facing: Who has real authority when Trump himself dictates so much of America’s foreign policy?

Indeed, one official said NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte was assured during his March visit to Washington, where he met with Trump, that the 20,000 troops surged to Europe would remain.

“The United States has repeatedly reaffirmed its strong commitment to NATO. President Trump emphasized this when he met with Secretary General Rutte at the White House last week,” a NATO spokesperson said when asked for comment.

The alienation has also not been universal. While visiting Europe last month, Hegseth traveled to Poland and had a warm reception with the country’s Deputy Prime Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, who also serves as the defense minister.

“It’s quite intentional that our first European bilateral is right here in Poland,” Hegseth said at a press conference. “We see Poland as the model ally on the continent,” he continued.

Poland spends over 4% of GDP on defense, and its president has pledged to increase that to 4.7% this year, which would make it the largest among NATO countries. And up until last year, Warsaw had been governed by a right-wing party that courted Trump, at one point even proposing a Polish military base named after the U.S. president.

Other allies are taking note.

In early March, Britain’s secretary of state for defense arrived in Washington to meet with Hegseth, a cordial meeting that ran 30 minutes longer than scheduled. Speaking with reporters later, John Healey delivered two points.

One, the United Kingdom was grateful for the Trump administration’s effort to end the war in Ukraine, despite the still-active pause in aid.

Two, Britain was stepping up. A week before, Britain pledged to increase defense spending to 2.5% of GDP within two years — on the way to reaching a full 3% later on.

Other members of NATO have since unveiled pledges of their own to spend more, a top goal of the Trump administration.

In private, officials from some of those countries offered a counter: Don’t expect the extra money to go to American defense firms — the new creed in Brussels amid a planned rearmament of the European Union to the tune of hundreds of billions of euros.

“I expect Europe to buy European,” Bergmann said.

About Noah Robertson

Noah Robertson is the Pentagon reporter at Defense News. He previously covered national security for the Christian Science Monitor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and government from the College of William & Mary in his hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia.

28. China Top Priority in Trump NATSEC Strategy, Says Panel

Good article. But I have to call out an excellent new term from Stephen Tankel: "barnacles of bureaucracy." (new to me at least). We need changes to strategic thinking and not new "barnacles of bureaucracy."

Perhaps we should halt the disruption and the breaking down of government structures and instead invest in the intellectual challenge of changing our strategic thinking and learn to adpt what we already have based on new strategic thinking.

Excerpts:

“I think it’s a very bad idea” for the United States to give up the position of Supreme Allied Commander Europe [SACEUR],” he said.

“The United States still accounts for two-thirds of NATO’s spending. Why would we give up the command?”

Tankel said the administration’s push to have Europe provide more for its own security was important and positive.

As to whether the structure of the combatant commands should be re-examined, Eaglen said in the past “everything has been just additive.”

Questions weren’t asked about the relevance of geography in an era of cyber and space warfare. In effect, defense leaders created “new barnacles of bureaucracy,” rather than changes to strategic thinking.

Reports say European and African Commands and Northern and Southern Commands are being considered in the drive to reallocate up to 8 percent of the Pentagon’s budget to more pressing priorities.

China Top Priority in Trump NATSEC Strategy, Says Panel - USNI News

news.usni.org · by John Grady · March 20, 2025

Two Chinese carriers drill in the South China Sea in late October. Chinese MoD Photo

China is the top priority in the Trump administration’s national security strategy, but that’s balanced with a sharpened focus on the Western Hemisphere, a panel of defense experts agreed Thursday.

Mackenzie Eaglen, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said, “China first, full stop” sits atop the security concerns in an administration with a diverse global outlook.

Beijing’s investments in developing weapons systems like its hypersonic glide vehicle reinforce the point of placing China as the nation’s top security concern, she added.

Looking at the immediate threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, Michael O’Hanlon, director of Brookings’ Strobe Talbott Center, said he was “a little more hopeful” that such an attack would not any time happen soon. “I’m not saying deterrence is about to fail” when it comes to holding back Xi Jin ping’s ambitions to take control of the self-governing island by force if necessary.

O’Hanlon noted the steps taken by the United States and its Pacific allies to bolster their own defenses and readiness to respond to possible China aggression in the Indo-Pacific has been effective.

The United States is “pretty good at combat,” he added. “I think [China is] wary” of undertaking an amphibious and air assault on Taiwan with forces untested in war for decades.

In a recently released paper, O’Hanlon wrote, “crossing the strait requires the PLA to protect big, vulnerable ships and airplanes. By contrast, using various gray-zone methods of harassment against shipping, limited missile strikes against ships and ports, or submarine attacks as part of a blockade (whether airtight or “leaky”) seems more consistent with Chinese military thinking—and more promising.”

Stephen Tankel, a professor of foreign policy and global security at American University, said in the Western Hemisphere the emphasis especially shows with the actions taken by the Pentagon in sending troops on a mission to secure the 2,000-mile-long southern border with Mexico.

Shortly after taking office, the Trump administration ordered 3,000 more active-duty soldiers to the border with Mexico. They joined the 1,200 already there and the 5,000 National Guardsmen under the control of local governors.

As an example of that new naval emphasis on the hemisphere and also as a demonstration of hard power, Eaglen pointed to the deployment of guided-missile destroyer USS Gravely (DDG-107) last week. The warship embarked with a Coast Guard law enforcement detachment to provide southern border protection with the dual mission of halting illegal migration by sea and stopping the flow of fentanyl into the United States.

USNI News reported U.S. Fleet Forces Commander Adm. Daryl Caudle told reporters there could be other West Coast-based destroyers that operate off the coast of San Diego.

“But you can think of operations in the Gulf of America being a predominant part of [southern border enforcement] for the East Coast ship, and then on the West Coast ship, you can think of the area in and around the San Diego area, and that traffic area coming in between Mexico and the United States.”

This deployment came at the same time as the Air Force confirmed U-2 and RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft were flying intelligence missions along the border.

The Washington Post reported that the administration is considering plans to allow active-duty service members to detain migrants who cross into the country illegally and then turn them over to law enforcement officials.

“How much of that is driven by domestic politics” is yet to be determined, said Tankel. Border security was a constant theme of President Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. He expressed concern over these border deployments are having on the active-duty force.

Also unclear now is whether the administration’s security approach is leaning toward allowing “spheres of influence” thinking where China is considered the lead in Asia, Russia in Europe and the United States in the Americas.

“Disruption can be good,” but when occurring across the board it sows confusion among the American workforce and allies, Tankel said. He included examples like downsizing the Pentagon civilian workforce and Washington and Moscow opening peace talks on Ukraine without Kyiv or the European Union present.

Nowhere is that more obvious than with Europe when it comes to Ukraine’s future and Washington’s commitment to the NATO alliance, O’Hanlon said.

“I think it’s a very bad idea” for the United States to give up the position of Supreme Allied Commander Europe [SACEUR],” he said.

“The United States still accounts for two-thirds of NATO’s spending. Why would we give up the command?”

Tankel said the administration’s push to have Europe provide more for its own security was important and positive.

As to whether the structure of the combatant commands should be re-examined, Eaglen said in the past “everything has been just additive.”

Questions weren’t asked about the relevance of geography in an era of cyber and space warfare. In effect, defense leaders created “new barnacles of bureaucracy,” rather than changes to strategic thinking.

Reports say European and African Commands and Northern and Southern Commands are being considered in the drive to reallocate up to 8 percent of the Pentagon’s budget to more pressing priorities.

news.usni.org · by John Grady · March 20, 2025

29. Top Trump official tasked with dismantling USAID is out

Another misleading headline. He is not "out;" he is simply returning to his original job which seems related to the USAID mission.

Excerpt:

A State Department official confirmed that Marocco would return to his role as the agency's Director of Foreign Assistance.

Top Trump official tasked with dismantling USAID is out

ABCNews.com · by ABC News

Pete Marocco, the Trump administration official tasked with dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development, told State Department staff on Tuesday night that he is stepping away from his role at USAID and returning to his previous role at the State Department, according to an email obtained by ABC News.

"It's been my honor to assist Secretary Rubio in his leadership of USAID through some difficult stages to pivot this enterprise away from its abuses of the past," Marocco said in the email. "Now that USAID is under control, accountable and stable, I am going to return to my post as the Director of Foreign Assistance to bring value back to the American people."

Secretary of State Marco Rubio named Marocco USAID deputy administrator in early February, and Marocco -- along with Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency -- led the widespread effort to dismantle the agency by laying off thousands of employees, revoking funding for more than 80% of its programs, and shedding its Washington, D.C., headquarters.

MORE: 'Radical change': Inside Trump's State Department takeover of USAID

Marocco said in his email that he is leaving now that "USAID is under control, accountable, and stable" -- however many of the administration's moves are currently being challenged or stalled in the courts, with a judge on Tuesday ruling that the dismantling of USAID was unconstitutional.

A State Department official confirmed that Marocco would return to his role as the agency's Director of Foreign Assistance, and that two political appointees would assume the responsibilities of the deputy administrator.

Those two individuals are Jeremy Lewin, who will serve as USAID COO and Deputy Administrator for Policy and Programs, and Ken Jackson, who will be USAID CFO and Deputy Administrator for Management and Resources, according to Marocco's email.

Lewin, 28, has been working with DOGE at the State Department, helping in the effort to dismantle USAID, sources told ABC News. He graduated in 2022 from Harvard Law School, where he co-authored multiple op-eds with renowned liberal constitutional law expert Laurence Tribe.

The USAID logo is seen on a machine that processes recycled plastic into construction blocks at the Pasig Eco Hub, a project impacted by the Trump administration's freeze on foreign aid, on March 10, 2025, in Pasig, Metro Manila, Philippines.

Ezra Acayan/Getty Images

He was later hired as an associate in the Los Angeles office of the law firm Munger, Towles & Olsen, according to a now-defunct profile on the firm's website.

Lewin appears to have no apparent government experience, though his law firm bio claimed that he had "confidentially advised senior global policymakers -- including the U.S. President and senior Congressional leaders, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zekelsnkyy, and senior members of the G7 and UN -- on matters of international law and policy."

Critics of the Trump administration say its efforts to nullify the agency will cripple American influence overseas and carry devastating effects for some of the most vulnerable populations in the world, which relied on U.S. funding for health care, food, and other basic needs.

In a statement shared by the State Department, Marocco said that "the crisis-level issues that had plagued USAID were far worse than we anticipated," and that "It has been an honor and a privilege to help restore accountability and transparency at USAID."

ABCNews.com · by ABC News

30. Want to End the Ukraine Conflict? Look at Finland's ‘Winter War’

And Korea:

Excepts:

The size, structure, manning and fundamental organization of the Korean DMZ offers a pretty good basket of precedents and questions for Ukraine. Should any deconflict zone be manned by Russians and Ukrainians? Or perhaps European Union troops on one side and Chinese on the other? How about forces from NATO and from Russia’s parallel group, the Collective Security Treaty Organization? Or a completely neutral United Nations peacekeeping force, recruited perhaps from South America and sub-Saharan Africa?

And how should it be organized? The Korean DMZ is a depth of 2.5 miles where no troops are supposed to be stationed (although both sides have built up military positions just beyond). And while it is primarily guarded by troops from the two Koreas, there is a UN force present as well, including American soldiers.

When it comes to Ukraine, there are plenty of combinations to consider, but the history of the DMZ is enlightening.

The other lesson from the Korean War is not pleasant: War can continue even after the shooting stops. The two Koreas are still technically in a state of war. And there have been frequent incidents, almost always provoked by North Korea, in which the militaries ended up exchanging artillery rounds, torpedoes or other forms of ordnance. Still, the armistice has held up.

Similarly, Russia and Ukraine are unlikely to reconcile fully any time soon, especially given Russia’s brutal war crimes. The Korean War shows us that it isn’t necessary to solve every problem at once. Nations can at least create a sensible ceasefire, leading to negotiations and then to an armistice. Don’t let the desire for a perfect outcome become the enemy of a pretty good one — especially if it allows the guns to go silent.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill: Sometimes to see into the future, you need to look further into the past. Looking at history, especially the Winter War and Korea, can help us see a better future for Ukraine.

Want to End the Ukraine Conflict? Look at Finland's ‘Winter War’

History has a sad lesson for Kyiv: It's usually sensible for a weaker combatant to give up a lot just to stay alive

March 20, 2025 at 1:00 AM EDT

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-03-20/want-to-end-the-ukraine-conflict-look-at-finland-s-winter-war?

By James Stavridis

James Stavridis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a retired US Navy admiral, former supreme allied commander of NATO, and vice chairman of global affairs at the Carlyle Group.

Which one is really the world’s greatest negotiator? Photographer: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

In any negotiation over ending a war, history can be a powerful tool to create a path to peace.

I learned this lesson many times, particularly when I was the dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. My students and I analyzed the conclusions of dozens of seemingly intractable conflicts and diplomatic negotiations — from relatively small wars like the Falklands conflict between Britain and Argentina in the 1980s, to the massive global world wars of the 20th century.

Using the past as a guide is something we should bear in mind as negotiations to end the fighting in Ukraine grow serious, even as Russian tyrant Vladmir Putin continues to block progress with unacceptable demands.

At Fletcher, we would often run diplomatic “peace games” — like a military war game, but with the objective of bringing the sides together. Sometimes, one combatant or the other had a real or perceived military advantage. Other times, both sides were exhausted and more than ready for a mediator. And occasionally, it took a sweeping military victory to create the conditions for negotiations.

We often used period maps to help us visualize the challenges, and outside my office were original charts used in setting conflicts in the Middle East after World War II — some of which continue to this day, of course.

As I watched my teams — comprised of foreign service officers, active-duty and reserve military members, banking executives, historians of diplomatic history, and people from various other walks of life — grapple with a future scenario, more often than not it would be a military veteran who would say, “We need to look again at the history if we are going to figure this out.”

Now, looking at the vicious war in Ukraine and trying to conceptualize how it could end, I think of two 20th-century wars. The first is the “Winter War” of 1939-40 between Finland and the Soviet Union, and the other is the Korean War in the early 1950s. What can we learn from these two conflicts that might inform a settlement to the brutal combat in Ukraine?

Let’s start with Finland, where the parallels are quite strong. The war began with a surprise attack in November 1939, when the Red Army under Joseph Stalin conducted an unprovoked assault against a far-smaller neighbor. Despite being enormously outnumbered and outgunned, the Finns mounted a spirited and creative defense. Using the winter weather to their advantage, and improvised weapons like the famous Molotov cocktail, they fought the Soviets largely to a standstill. They are justifiably proud of their performance.

Whenever I went to Helsinki as supreme allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (long before Finland’s recent ascension to the alliance), I was taken to the Winter War Museum. It is an extraordinary depiction of human courage in the face of not only a brutal military foe, but also against Mother Nature’s best winter punch. When I finished my tour as NATO commander, the Finns presented me with a beautiful battle map of the war, which I display at my home today.

But here’s the bad news. The Finns ultimately were forced to give up about 11% of their territory to Russia. The enormous disparity in manpower and combat equipment ultimately made that inevitable. The Finns also had to pledge they would remain neutral and not join any coalitions of the West. It was an unpalatable choice, but it preserved Finland as a sovereign state.

The lesson here is clear: When faced with a more powerful opponent, you must maintain flexibility and be willing to trade land for peace. You may also have to forswear joining the defense alliances of your choice. Live to fight another day, as Finland did, and you may one day end up in NATO.

The Korean War has two powerful lessons to offer. North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950, and fighting continued for three years. Difficult negotiations were required to bring the conflict to a ceasefire and then to an armistice.

The first lesson from Korea that applies to Ukraine is the imperative of creating a significant physical deconflict zone between combatants. The 160-mile Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea is now more than 70 years old. It has seen plenty of controversy and incursions from both sides — but the DMZ’s presence has helped preserve an uneasy peace on the peninsula.

The size, structure, manning and fundamental organization of the Korean DMZ offers a pretty good basket of precedents and questions for Ukraine. Should any deconflict zone be manned by Russians and Ukrainians? Or perhaps European Union troops on one side and Chinese on the other? How about forces from NATO and from Russia’s parallel group, the Collective Security Treaty Organization? Or a completely neutral United Nations peacekeeping force, recruited perhaps from South America and sub-Saharan Africa?

And how should it be organized? The Korean DMZ is a depth of 2.5 miles where no troops are supposed to be stationed (although both sides have built up military positions just beyond). And while it is primarily guarded by troops from the two Koreas, there is a UN force present as well, including American soldiers.

When it comes to Ukraine, there are plenty of combinations to consider, but the history of the DMZ is enlightening.

The other lesson from the Korean War is not pleasant: War can continue even after the shooting stops. The two Koreas are still technically in a state of war. And there have been frequent incidents, almost always provoked by North Korea, in which the militaries ended up exchanging artillery rounds, torpedoes or other forms of ordnance. Still, the armistice has held up.

Similarly, Russia and Ukraine are unlikely to reconcile fully any time soon, especially given Russia’s brutal war crimes. The Korean War shows us that it isn’t necessary to solve every problem at once. Nations can at least create a sensible ceasefire, leading to negotiations and then to an armistice. Don’t let the desire for a perfect outcome become the enemy of a pretty good one — especially if it allows the guns to go silent.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill: Sometimes to see into the future, you need to look further into the past. Looking at history, especially the Winter War and Korea, can help us see a better future for Ukraine.