Conflict in India’s Manipur Takes a New Turn With Intra-Community Clashes

Rajeev Bhattacharyya

Source Link

The Indian government’s efforts to normalize the situation in conflict-ridden Manipur has met with limited success, revealing the deep and multi-layered faultlines in the border state that has been burning for almost two years.

Supreme Court Justice B R. Gavai, who had led a delegation of five Supreme Court judges as part of the National Legal Services Authority’s initiative to monitor efforts for supporting communities impacted by violence in Manipur, has described the situation in the state as a “difficult phase.”

Ethnic clashes erupted in Manipur on May 3, 2023. In the 22 months since, the violence has claimed around 250 lives and displaced nearly 60,000 people. Many of those displaced from their homes are lodged in relief camps. The government’s inability to check the violence has provoked sharp criticism from different quarters, including global organizations.

On February 13, Manipur’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government was suspended and President’s Rule (Federal Rule) was imposed.

Since then, the government has unleashed efforts aimed at making the state free from violence and restoring communication through roads that different communities engaged in the conflict blocked for several months.

How India Is Responding to Trump: Five Takeaways from a Trip to New Delhi

David Sacks and Paul B. Stares

Source Link

We recently returned from one week of meetings in New Delhi with a range of think tank experts, academics, and government officials. Our visit occurred following the Oval Office confrontation between Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and President Donald Trump and coincided with negotiations between the United States and Ukraine in Saudi Arabia. The prospect of a U.S.-Russia rapprochement and a U.S.-China deal dominated our conversations. Below are five principal takeaways of what we heard about U.S.-India relations, how India sees its role in the Indo-Pacific, and how it plans to navigate a second Trump administration.

India views Trump’s pivot toward Russia as a vindication of its stance on the war in Ukraine.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, India refrained from signing on to multilateral sanctions and instead took advantage of the low price of Russian oil. Whereas Russian crude oil accounted for only one percent of India’s oil imports on the eve of the war, this has now surged to 40 percent, and Russia is currently India’s top supplier of crude oil. Russia and India also have a long-standing security relationship, with Russian equipment accounting for over 60 percent of India’s military hardware. Indian elites describe Russia as a trusted, reliable partner, with one scholar even describing Moscow to us as a “beacon of light.”

Indians spent 1.1 lakh crore hours staring at smartphones to make many richer

Gourab Das

Source Link

What's your usual view when you get on a metro, bus, or even see family members at a dining table in a restaurant? You’ll likely find most of them with their heads down, engrossed in their smartphones. While critics blame the government for recent economic slowdowns, and India's growth is set to hit a four-year low due to weaker consumer spending, smartphone users show no signs of slowing down, helping social media influencers and businesses make more money.

In a country witnessing rapid Internet adoption, with smartphones available on offers almost every day and e-commerce companies rolling out new sale seasons every month, new data shows that Indians have spent over a trillion hours glued to their smartphones—while social media and OTT platforms cash in. India is a goldmine for driving Internet data sales, as citizens of the world's most populous country stay hooked to their screens, from watching viral videos and Oscar winners to booking international trips.

Indians spend 1.1 lakh crores staring at smartphonesIndians collectively spent 1.1 lakh crore hours staring at their smartphones in 2024, according to management consultant EY, as cheap internet makes platforms from Instagram to Netflix more accessible to the world’s most populous nation.

On average, they spent five hours daily on the mobile screen, nearly 70% of it devoted to social media platforms, gaming, and videos, EY said in its annual entertainment report published Thursday.

Experts warn Pentagon to embrace software-defined warfare to counter China’s military advantage

Carley Welch

Source Link

If the US wants to win a war against its adversaries, namely China, the Pentagon must get serious about implementing software-defined warfare, experts from the Atlantic Council said Wednesday.

The Atlantic Council’s new report “Commission on Software-defined Warfare” outlines recommendations for developing a military that pivots from the sole use of legacy hardware and processes to software-defined warfare — a software-centric, hardware-enabled approach that focuses on the continuous integration of cutting-edge, interoperable tech.

When asked what would happen if the Pentagon did not implement software-defined warfare sooner rather than later, Commission Director of the report Stephen Rodriguez told reporters at a Defense Writers Group event, “we lose to China.” Therefore, he said, the recommendations focus on the “near term” before 2027, when several defense leaders theorize that ​​China will invade Taiwan.

“China’s outproducing us in ships, munitions and other systems,” Peter Modigliani, one of the authors of the report and a senior advisor at Govini, added. “So that’s where software is going to be the differentiator. Harnessing America’s commercial advantage in a military standpoint, to then have that so we can rapidly upgrade legacy systems, design new weapon systems, and then have the rapid decision support from C2 [command and control] to logistics, and have that rapid iterative cycle. That’s going to be an advantage.”

Crouching Panda, Hidden Dragon: Contesting Chinese Subversion in the Middle East and Central Asia

Steve Ferenzi & David Harden

Source Link

Pandas, Dragons, and Irregular Deterrence—oh my!

With their charming appearance, gentle demeanor, and playful behavior, pandas are adored worldwide. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) deceptively uses this disarming motif to present itself as a gentle giant while obfuscating its global predatory, neocolonial behavior. But hiding inside the PRC’s cheap panda suit is a red dragon seeking to prey on the Middle East and Central Asia. Unfortunately, the singular U.S. focus on Taiwan creates blinders enabling the PRC to “securitize its greater periphery” by capturing strategic geography and human terrain globally beyond the Indo-Pacific. To comprehensively shape PRC decision calculus over Taiwan and other areas of U.S. national interest, the United States must exploit outsized gray zone deterrence opportunities via irregular warfare in the Central Region. Otherwise, bureaucratic and cognitive stovepipes will impede application of a true trans-regional approach to “integrating” deterrence as U.S. national defense and security strategies call for.

Forgotten in America’s shift away from counterterrorism, the Central Region remains a core political and economic axis for the PRC’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to connect Asia to Europe. Beijing exploits access and influence opportunities along the BRI through economic statecraft with military implications—opened by perceptions of declining U.S. engagement and loss of credibility. Whether through “strategic fulcrums” like the United Arab Emirates or via states under massive debt distress like Tajikistan, the PRC can wield significant ideological, economic, and political power on the global stage. Today, we see the PRC increasing its role in regional peace, security, and diplomacy, while trade with the region has more than tripled over the past 20 years. As the world’s largest crude oil importer, the People’s Republic sources 46% of its oil from the Middle East. To wit—the PRC is truly beginning to “win the Middle East” at the expense of U.S. national security.

China, Russia, and the United States in Low Earth Orbit

Camille Reeves & Cortney Weinbaum

Source Link

RAND researchers compiled publicly available information on space systems in low earth orbit (LEO) that are operated by a government, military, or commercial entity in China, Russia, or the United States. The tool shown below and the downloadable dataset contain the results of that research, along with descriptions of systems that could harm or hinder LEO operations (e.g., ground-based lasers) and of launch vehicles available for each country to reach LEO.

Users can view information about LEO systems and capabilities to explore trends across such attributes as country of origin and systems’ primary functions. We include terrestrial weapons designed specifically for LEO, such as ground-based lasers, but not terrestrial weapons designed for other purposes, such as intercontinental ballistic missiles. This tool is designed to display LEO constellations by system rather than by individual asset count. Full constellation counts, along with other asset-level details, are available in the dataset. The definition for each term and function is provided in the “Definitions” section below each tool and in the download file, and a citation for more information about each system is in the dataset for download.

We created this tool as a resource for researchers and analysts seeking data on China’s, Russia’s, and the United States’ LEO assets. This tool is based on publicly available information, and these data were current as of September 30, 2024.

Limits of Economic Deterrence in the US-China Tech Competition

Rogier Creemers and Louise Marie Hurel

Source Link

A week before reaching a deal, US President Donald Trump said he wanted $500 billion worth of Ukraine’s critical minerals as compensation for having supported the country following the full-scale invasion by Russia in February 2022. The offer, then rejected by Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, was followed by threats to cut the country’s access to Starlink’s satellite communications system if it did not reach a deal. At the core of the US government’s pressure lays, among other things, its desire to diminish US dependency on the country that holds almost half of the world’s critical minerals reserves essential for tech development: China.

Only 12 days following the inauguration of Trump’s second presidency, the administration announced a fresh set of 10% tariffs on imports from China—shortly thereafter increased by an extra 10%. China followed with a retaliatory set of measures including antitrust probes into US tech companies, 10-15% tariffs on farm products, coal, crude oil and farm equipment, and expansion of export controls on critical minerals that are essential in producing everything from smartphones to F-35s and solar panels.

Trump’s latest rush to secure critical minerals in Ukraine, a country that currently does not produce them (despite having them) and cannot ensure easy access to them during an ongoing war, raises the question of how ready they are to deal with pressures from their trade war with China – particularly in realms of high technology. How quickly and effectively can they respond to, and anticipate changes to critical supply chains feeding key sectors such as defence and technology? How effective have US economic deterrence measures been to stop Chinese tech?

China’s legacy chip buildout A new EU strategic dependency that needs de-risking?

Tim Rühlig

Source Link

Introduction

Legacy chips have taken centre stage in the geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China. The European Union is concerned that it might soon be overly reliant on legacy chips from China. Legacy chips are of strategic importance as they are irreplaceable in a wide range of applications, from the automotive sector to medical appliances or the defence and aerospace sector. The challenge is real but, contrary to a popular belief, it does not stem from overcapacity. This has concrete policy consequences. Instead of “protect” measures, the EU should focus on “promote” and “partner” tools. The EU should strive to maintain a significant global market share for European chip makers by securing access to the domestic Chinese market. Furthermore, it should promote the diversification and expansion of the global supply of legacy chips, not least by expanding European investment in third countries. Finally, it should adopt strategies to maintain European technological strengths where they exist.

Artificial Intelligence, China, and America’s Next Industrial Revolution

Dewey Murdick and William Hannas

Source Link

The United States has faced defining moments before, such as two world wars, a cold war, economic stagnation in the 1970s, the rise of Japan in the 1980s, and the aftermath of 9/11. But today’s competition with China is something different. The People’s Republic is a rival that matches our economic scale, technological strength, global influence, and geopolitical aspirations. Yet, U.S. policymakers lack a coherent strategy to manage this unprecedented challenge. Instead, the country finds itself in a dangerous cycle of reactive decision-making that plays directly into Beijing’s hands.

American statecraft increasingly defaults to outward-facing tools that include coercion through economic sanctions and the threat of military action. While somewhat effective in the past, this approach is insufficient for the China challenge. In essence, the United States is reacting to China’s moves instead of pursuing its own positive agenda. Breaking free from this pattern means that U.S. policymakers must reimagine what success looks like beyond maintaining the current global order.

The United States needs new strategies, supported by research and continuous monitoring, to evaluate China’s competitive moves, track its technological progress, assess economic risks, and discern patterns in its dealings with other countries. Better measures and understanding of China’s own challenges can inform a proactive vision for securing long-term success amid geopolitical competition. Our current approach—a reactive patchwork of feel-good solutions that treats symptoms while ignoring the underlying causes—is a formula for defeat.

US foreign assistance freeze: significance for the Middle East

Laith Alajlouni, Hasan Alhasan & Asna Wajid

Source Link

The Trump administration's drastic reduction of US foreign assistance to the Middle East, including a freeze on all foreign aid and the elimination of 83% of USAID programmes, marks a significant shift in US foreign policy. This decision, driven by the ‘America First’ approach and a desire to streamline operations, has had far-reaching consequences, particularly for key regional allies like Egypt, Israel, and Jordan, although military aid for these countries has remained largely unaffected. The freeze has exacerbated humanitarian crises in conflict zones such as Yemen, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, where vital services and development programmes have been disrupted. The cuts also risk diminishing US influence in the region, creating space for China, Russia, and other powers to expand their geopolitical influence. While the reductions align with domestic conservative views on foreign aid, they have sparked concerns about the long-term stability of the region, the effectiveness of the United States' approach to humanitarian needs, and the potential for fostering resentment and radicalisation. This policy shift reflects broader trends towards nationalistic, transactional foreign policy, prioritising short-term security and diplomatic objectives over long-term development and humanitarian goals.

Russia may be ‘dragging feet’ on achieving peace in Ukraine, Trump says

Angus Watson, Jessie Yeung, Ivana Kottasová and Anna Chernova

Source Link

US President Donald Trump said he believes Russia wants to end its war with Ukraine, but suggested Moscow could be “dragging their feet” after the Kremlin disputed accounts of agreements made with the US.

“I think that Russia wants to see an end to it, but it could be they’re dragging their feet. I’ve done it over the years,” the president told the right-wing cable channel Newsmax in an interview that aired Tuesday night.

“I think Russia would like to see it end and I think (Ukraine’s President Volodymyr) Zelensky would like to see it end, at this point,” Trump said.

His comments came only hours after Russia said it would only implement a US-brokered deal to stop using force in the Black Sea once some of the sanctions imposed on its banks and exports over its invasion of Ukraine are lifted.

Following days of separate negotiations with Ukrainian and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia, the White House said on Tuesday that the two sides had agreed “to ensure safe navigation, eliminate the use of force, and prevent the use of commercial vessels for military purposes in the Black Sea.”

Drones, Mines and Snipers: Ukraine’s Front Line Is a World Away from Peace Talks

Marc Santora and Liubov Sholudko

Source Link

Hunted by drones, stalked by snipers and surrounded by minefields, soldiers fighting in Ukraine can’t risk even a small lapse in concentration.

That is why Col. Dmytro Palisa, commander of Ukraine’s 33rd Mechanized Brigade, instructs his soldiers to ignore speculation about a possible cease-fire.

“They start relaxing, they start overthinking, putting on rose-colored glasses, thinking that tomorrow will be easier. No,” he said in an interview at a command post on the eastern front. “We shoot until we are given the order to stop.”

As diplomats and European leaders thousands of miles away talk about a possible truce and how to safeguard it, Russia and Ukraine are engaged in bloody battles as intense as any of the war. The furious fighting, tearing across the Ukrainian front, is, in part, a late play for land and leverage in the talks, which the Trump administration says are making progress.

ANNUAL THREAT ASSESSMENT OF THE U.S. INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

Source Link

INTRODUCTION

This annual report of worldwide threats to the national security of the United States responds to Section 617 of the FY21 Intelligence Authorization Act (Pub. L. No. 116-260). This report reflects the collective insights of the Intelligence Community (IC), which is committed to providing the nuanced, independent, and unvarnished intelligence that policymakers, warfighters, and domestic law enforcement personnel need to protect American lives and America’s interests anywhere in the world.

This assessment focuses on the most direct, serious threats to the United States primarily during the next year. All these threats require a robust intelligence response, including those where a near-term focus may help head off greater threats in the future.

Information available as of 18 March was used in the preparation of this assessment.

Airborne Electromagnetic Warfare in NATO: A Critical European Capability Gap

Professor Justin Bronk

Source Link

Airborne electromagnetic warfare (EW) capabilities are critical to Western airpower, but they are also one of the areas in which NATO countries have the greatest dependence on the US military. The scale of this dependence represents a potential risk for the Alliance if Russian aggression occurs when American reinforcements and support capacity are either tied up with a concurrent crisis in another theatre or are otherwise unavailable at scale.

• No single European country has either the existing foundations or sufficient suitably qualified and experienced personnel to rapidly be able to add meaningful capabilities across all aspects of EW. Therefore, creating end-to-end capability within Europe will require genuine multinational partnerships and cooperative specialisation.
• The UK has maintained world-class signals analysis and mission dataprogramming expertise, especially through the Joint Electronic Warfare Operational Support Centre and the tactical data-focused Typhoon Mission Support Centre. However, maintaining these vital and scarce capabilities in electromagnetic support measures (ESM) and electromagnetic countermeasures (ECM) in an era of rapidly evolving digital threat systems will require increased investment and rapid adoption of AI- and machine learning-enabled toolsets.
• The key to rapidly increasing European NATO’s ability to collect electromagnetic intelligence data is to ensure that all the electronic support measures suites being carried by non-traditional ISR platforms – such as modern fighter aircraft and UAVs for other mission sets – are used to their full collection potential.
• A pooled multinational electromagnetic attack squadron procured and run by NATO could allow air forces that are too small to economically field dedicated EW capabilities to meaningfully contribute funding and personnel. There is precedence for this approach in other areas, such as the NATO Airborne Warning and Control System Force (AWACS), the Multinational Multirole Tanker Transport Capability fleet, and the Strategic Airlift Capability fleet.

Ukrainian Formations Have Largely Withdrawn From Russian Region Of Kursk – Analysis

Can Kasapoğlu

Source Link

1. North Korea and Russia Launch a Large-Scale Offensive in Kursk

Tactical engagements sprang up across multiple flashpoints last week. Eastern Ukraine continued to see fierce fighting as Ukrainian efforts to stabilize the front faced mounting Russian offensives. Each belligerent made incremental gains in various axes across the line of contact, including in Pokrovsk and Toretsk.

Russian offensives in Kupiansk and Lyman also generated heavy combat. On the front near Chasiv Yar, the Ukrainian military fought to forestall further Russian territorial gains. Meanwhile, resupplied Russian forces mounted a push in southern Ukraine.

The Ukrainian General Staff reported that the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) has heightened the frequency of aerial glide bomb and drone strikes. The VKS also continued to increase its use of Shahed loitering munitions. These drone salvos targeted wide swaths of Ukraine, including Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Odesa.

International Geopolitical Finance Through The Lens Of Euro And US Dollar – Analysis

Xia Ri

Source Link

In the era of globalization, the U.S. dollar has been the most important financial dominant force globally since World War II. The euro, on the other hand, is a later development. The euro was established in the Maastricht Treaty, signed in 1992 by the European Union to create an Economic and Monetary Union of Europe (EMU). It officially began on January 1, 1999, as the currency for 20 EU countries, with a population of 300 million people using it. Europeans pride themselves on the fact that the euro is the most significant result of European monetary reform since the Roman Empire. During the peak of globalization, for many years after the euro’s introduction, Europe openly declared that the euro was the primary force to counterbalance and share the global market with the U.S. They spared no effort in promoting and enhancing the euro’s status as the world’s main reserve currency. This narrative was only denied by Europeans after the Trump administration took office, in an attempt to downplay the longstanding financial rivalry that had existed for decades.

After Trump took office, as the U.S.’s stance toward Europe became clearer, the trend of ideological divergence between the U.S. and Europe grew more apparent. Consequently, the confrontation between the U.S. and Europe is shifting from politics and ideology to economics, industries, and finance. This has led to the question: Could Europe potentially short the U.S. dollar to achieve certain political objectives? This question not only involves the operations of financial markets but also touches on geopolitical maneuvering and competition in the international monetary system.

To End the Ukraine War, Trump Should Think Like Ike

Graham Allison

Source Link

As President Donald Trump struggles to fulfill his campaign promise to bring an immediate end to the war in Ukraine, he and his team should review what another American president did facing a similar challenge seven decades ago. In his 1952 campaign for the White House, Dwight David Eisenhower pledged to end a bloody war that had claimed more than 3 million lives on the Korean Peninsula. Over the next six months, he actually did it. After winning the election but before he was inaugurated, he went to South Korea, overruled its leader, Syngman Rhee, who was determined to fight on to victory, and energized a process that concluded with the signing of the armistice on his 189th day in office. If Trump hopes to match Ike’s record, he has just 121 days left.

When Eisenhower became president in January 1953, the Korean War had been stuck in a stalemate for a year and a half. To remind readers of the history: the war had begun in June 1950, when Kim Il-Sung’s North Korean forces launched a surprise invasion of South Korea, advanced rapidly, and were on the cusp of taking control of the entire peninsula. President Harry Truman ordered General Douglas MacArthur and U.S. troops stationed in Japan to come to the rescue. The Americans rapidly stopped North Korea’s advance, beat it into retreat, and liberated Seoul. Without much thought about the likely consequences, MacArthur’s forces continued their march across the 38th parallel into North Korea, seized the capital Pyongyang, and were advancing toward the Chinese border. For China’s leader Mao Zedong, this posed an unacceptable threat. On November 1, MacArthur was shocked to find a 300,000-strong vanguard of the Chinese army assaulting American and allied forces. In the weeks that followed, what MacArthur and his fellow commanders had dismissed as a “peasant army” not only halted the allied advance but forced them back past the 38th parallel. Despite a U.S.-led counteroffensive, the war soon bogged down in a stalemate, though thousands of combatants continued dying each month.

NATO Without America

Ivo H. Daalder

Source Link

During its 76-year history, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has faced its share of crises, but none have been as grave as what it confronts today. Since returning to office, U.S. President Donald Trump has questioned the two core principles of the alliance’s collective defense commitment: that there is a shared understanding of the threats to NATO members and that security among all those members is indivisible. 

European Strategic Autonomy is an Illusion

Can Kasapoglu and Peter Rough

Source Link

Unsettled by President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine, Europe is in a rush to improve its armed forces. “Spend, spend, spend on defense and deterrence,” Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen told reporters earlier this month.

On the same day Frederiksen made her comments, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, presented a plan that could—in theory, at least—unlock hundreds of billions of euros in defense spending. Most importantly, Germany’s next government is targeting a major military buildup that would exempt any defense spending above 1 percent of gross domestic product from the country’s constitutionally mandated debt brake. Hardly a day goes by without headlines of a new scheme for European defense spending.

The markets have taken notice. Great Britain’s BAE Systems, France’s Thales, Germany’s Rheinmetall, Sweden’s Saab—Europe’s major defense companies have been red hot in recent trading on European exchanges, significantly outperforming their American counterparts.

Earlier this month, Portuguese defense minister Nuno Melo captured the prevailing mood when he raised doubts about Lisbon’s plans to replace its F-16s with F-35s. “There are several options that must be considered, particularly in the context of European production,” he mused to local media.

U.S. Preemptive Concessions Gain Nothing From Russia in Ukraine Ceasefire Talks (Part One)

Vladimir Socor

Source Link

Russian and Ukrainian delegations held technical-level consultations separately with U.S. representatives from the Trump Administration on March 23–25 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin had outlined the agenda for this consultation in their March 18 telephone call, following Putin’s rejection of Trump’s proposal for a comprehensive, unconditional ceasefire in Russia’s war against Ukraine (see EDM, March 21).

The White House is keen to broker a ceasefire and political-diplomatic settlement. As speed remains a priority, the Kremlin has added preconditions for a ceasefire and any eventual settlement. This time the agenda focused on a maritime and aerial ceasefire and commercial navigation in the Black Sea basin. Although the U.S. delegation offered several preemptive concessions, Moscow’s representatives demanded more. Both sides released separate statements on the outcome of the talks, along with the Ukrainians’ own interpretive comments (President of Russia; The White House, March 25). Meanwhile, Russian offensive ground and air operations have continued at high rates (Ukrinform, March 23–26).

If Anthropic Succeeds, a Nation of Benevolent AI Geniuses Could Be Born

Steven Levy

Source Link

When Dario Amodei gets excited about AI—which is nearly always—he moves. The cofounder and CEO springs from a seat in a conference room and darts over to a whiteboard. He scrawls charts with swooping hockey-stick curves that show how machine intelligence is bending toward the infinite. His hand rises to his curly mop of hair, as if he’s caressing his neurons to forestall a system crash. You can almost feel his bones vibrate as he explains how his company, Anthropic, is unlike other AI model builders. He’s trying to create an artificial general intelligence—or as he calls it, “powerful AI”—that will never go rogue. It’ll be a good guy, an usher of utopia. And while Amodei is vital to Anthropic, he comes in second to the company’s most important contributor. Like other extraordinary beings (Beyoncé, Cher, Pelé), the latter goes by a single name, in this case a pedestrian one, reflecting its pliancy and comity. Oh, and it’s an AI model. Hi, Claude!

Amodei has just gotten back from Davos, where he fanned the flames at fireside chats by declaring that in two or so years Claude and its peers will surpass people in every cognitive task. Hardly recovered from the trip, he and Claude are now dealing with an unexpected crisis. A Chinese company called DeepSeek has just released a state-of-the-art large language model that it purportedly built for a fraction of what companies like Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic spent. The current paradigm of cutting-edge AI, which consists of multibillion-dollar expenditures on hardware and energy, suddenly seemed shaky.

U.S. Revives Tough Demands in Reworked Deal for Ukraine’s Minerals

Constant Méheut

Source Link

More than a month after Washington and Kyiv first haggled over a deal to grant the United States a major stake in Ukraine’s mineral, oil and gas development projects, the two sides are back to square one in the negotiations.

Washington has sent Kyiv a new proposal that restates the sweeping financial demands from an initial draft agreement rejected by Ukraine, and adds new ones that could burden the country’s finances for years, according to the text of the new draft obtained by The New York Times, and authenticated and reviewed by three current and former Ukrainian officials.

Several Ukrainian lawmakers suggested that Ukraine could not possibly accept such a deal and that new negotiations would be needed.

President Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters in Paris on Thursday that the new proposal required “detailed study” and suggested that a final agreement was still far-off. But he also said he did not want “to leave the U.S. with the feeling that Ukraine is against it in general.”

“We support cooperation with the U.S.,” Mr. Zelensky said. “We don’t want to send any signals that could lead the U.S. to stop aid to Ukraine.”

Putin’s Theories of Victory

Alexander Gabuev, Alexandra Prokopenko, and Tatiana Stanovaya

Source Link

When talking about U.S. President Donald Trump and his turn against Kyiv, Russian President Vladimir Putin has tried to avoid public displays of triumph. After his first acknowledged conversation with Trump following the U.S. president’s return to the White House, on February 12, Putin has said that the initial goal of U.S.-Russian talks is simply to increase trust between the parties. When they talked again, for two hours on March 18, the Kremlin’s official statement indicated that “the leaders confirmed their intention to continue efforts aimed at reaching a settlement in Ukraine bilaterally.”

But Moscow’s gloating is hard to miss. “The U.S. is taking a much more balanced position,” said the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov in February, two weeks after the first call. “We certainly welcome this.” In a press release after the second call, the Kremlin “expressed gratitude to Donald Trump for his desire to help achieve the noble goal of ending hostilities.” It would be shocking if they weren’t grateful: in less than two months, Trump has presented Russia with greater symbolic and material victories than the country could have fathomed. After Trump, U.S. Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fought in the Oval Office on February 28, Trump temporarily suspended U.S. military assistance to Kyiv. Washington withdrew from a group dedicated to investigating war crimes by Russia’s leaders. It voted against a UN resolution that blamed Moscow for the war. And Trump and his senior officials repeatedly parroted Russian disinformation about the conflict, including by blaming it on Kyiv.

How Oct. 7 Changed Israel’s Security Doctrine - Analysis

Aaron David Miller and Lauren Morganbesser

Source Link

For Israel, the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, changed many things. But perhaps the most striking result has been a new definition of border security.

Israel has long regarded preemption and prevention as part of defending its borders. But for this Israeli government, the line between defense and offense is now blurred in a way that it’s never been before. The Israel-Hamas cease-fire didn’t just come to an end; Israel ended it. Driving this new approach is Israel’s determination to act unilaterally; an aversion to security arrangements that inhibit that right; an emphasis on the importance of retaining buffers and strategic points in places such as Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria; and the expectation that the United States will enable—if not support—this new approach.

Economic Warfare: Microprocessors At The Heart Of Global Tensions – OpEd

Robert Moore

Source Link

Europe is a favorable place for the microprocessor industry to grow and flourish: the region has numerous strengths throughout the value chain, such as top-tier research and a supportive scale-up environment. The current reality, however, matches neither the ambition nor the potential. The region trails behind global competitors in the sector, as investments and profits are primarily dominated by the U.S. European entities exhibit a weak presence at critical supply chain bottlenecks. Analysts trace the origins of the problem to investment gaps and difficulties in translating R&D strengths into manufacturing and commercialization. And no less important, global tensions between the U.S. and China contribute substantially.

The geopolitical clash isn’t just about trade deficits or tariffs; it’s a technological arms race with profound implications for global power. Consider the recent U.S. restrictions on the import of graphics processing units (GPUs), used in various kinds of computer data processing, or another series of technology export constraints imposed by China. For now, the bans don’t directly concern most European countries, yet the situation itself highlights the danger of over-reliance on imports. A world where nations vie for crucial technologies and resources (like the U.S. seeking access to Ukrainian rare earths, primarily mined for the tech industry) is creating a fractured landscape where access to technological components dictates economic and military might, and caught in the crossfire is Europe.