Are India-US Relations Entering a Difficult Phase?

Rushali Saha

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At a media briefing on May 13, India’s Ministry of External Affairs dismissed President Donald Trump’s claims of having “mediated” a “full and immediate ceasefire” between New Delhi and Islamabad. The deal was “bilaterally reached,” it said.

A day later, Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar told reporters there was “absolutely no change” in New Delhi’s long-standing position that all dealings with Pakistan would be “strictly bilateral.”

Trump had announced the India-Pakistan ceasefire and the U.S. role in brokering it on May 10. Soon after, India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri announced at a special briefing that the Director General of Military Operations of Pakistan had initiated a call with his Indian counterpart and both sides agreed to “stop all firing and military action on land and in the air and sea.” He made no mention of the United States.

This, however, did not restrain Trump from repeatedly claiming thereafter that the U.S. had brokered the ceasefire between India and Pakistan. During his ongoing Middle East tour, Trump said in Saudi Arabia that he “used trade to a large extent” to broker the ceasefire. However, in Qatar, he did tone down his claims, saying he “helped settle the problem,” but reiterated having used trade as leverage.

Back in India, public outrage and criticism, particularly from the opposition parties, prompted the Indian foreign ministry to end the Narendra Modi government’s silence on the question of U.S. mediation. It has clarified that while there were there were “conversations” between Indian and U.S. leaders on the “evolving military situation,” the issue of trade “did not come up in any of these discussions.”

Trump’s announcement of the ceasefire on social media, before the concerned parties – India and Pakistan – could make the announcement themselves, is characteristic of his penchant to project himself as a “peacemaker.”

However, even if one dismisses Trump’s remarks as an attempt at vanity, it is concerning that the U.S. State Department’s messaging was at odds with New Delhi’s official position.

When India and Pakistan Went to War – Online

Nishtha Gupta

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When terrorists attacked a tourist convoy in Pahalgam in April 2025, killing 26 civilians, it set in motion a crisis that brought nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan to the brink. India retaliated with airstrikes deep inside Pakistani territory. Pakistan returned fire. In capitals around the world, diplomats raced to defuse tensions, eventually securing a fragile ceasefire.

But even as guns fell silent along the border, another battle was escalating – one waged in feeds and timelines, fought not by soldiers but by social-media savvy citizens. They weren’t soldiers or diplomats, but in an instant, they had enlisted as digital warriors in a war fought not with missiles or tanks, but with likes, shares, and viral outrage.

This wasn’t warfare as traditionally understood. This was warfare as theater, driven by outrage, optimized for engagement, and amplified by algorithms. Social media didn’t merely document the conflict; it reshaped it. For millions, especially politically disengaged middle-class citizens, it offered a compelling way to experience nationalism – not as citizens voting or organizing, but as digital warriors performing patriotism online.

This was conflict transformed into content. And it changed the nature of war itself.

The Frontline in Your Pocket

Traditional warfare demands clarity: who attacked whom, and why. But the digital battlefield defies such clarity, thriving instead on immediacy, sensationalism, and emotional intensity. In the chaotic aftermath of the India-Pakistan strikes, social media feeds filled rapidly with misinformation – clips from unrelated conflicts, recycled explosions, even footage from video games – all shared without verification. Authenticity quickly became irrelevant; what mattered was engagement.

Platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and Telegram weren’t merely passive channels; they actively propelled misinformation forward. Algorithms favored the most shocking visuals and incendiary headlines, fueling outrage because outrage captures attention. And attention, especially on social media, is highly profitable and addictively engaging.

India’s Western Front Problem

Aparna Pande, and Vinay Kaura

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To become the global power of its ambitions, India needs to resist the temptation to view the subcontinent as the totality of its security concerns.

While it will take days, if not months, to find out the details of the April-May 2025 India-Pakistan conflagration, what should be clear to Indian strategists and policymakers is that a country that seeks to be a global power cannot afford the illusion of geographical insularity. India has a unique geostrategic location at the confluence of South, Southeast, Central, and West Asia, and the Indian state needs the ability to focus on challenges on both the continental and maritime fronts. Furthermore, the existential strategic—security and economic—challenge India faces is from China, not Pakistan.

The latest crisis demonstrated this once again, where we saw Indian media, largely television but also social media, fixate on Pakistan instead of looking at the strategic big picture. Treating each provocation from Islamabad as the epicenter of strategic meaning confuses a tactical echo with a structural tremor. The recent military confrontation may stir nationalist fervor and animate political theatre, but to allow it to monopolize India’s strategic gaze is to fall prey to a perilous provincialism.

India stands at a crossroads where its historical grievances intersect with the tectonic shifts of a changing world. In such a moment, the impulse to retaliate—particularly in the face of yet another assault, perhaps a terror attack in Kashmir—carries with it both the allure of resolution and the danger of regression. For it is not the scale of the provocation that matters but the choreography behind it. Responding in kind may satisfy public emotion, but it risks stepping into a design that is not of India’s making.

There is, embedded within the theater of Pakistan’s belligerence, a subtler, more insidious logic. Pakistani army chief General Asim Munir’s goals were both domestic and external.

Afghanistan’s Critical Minerals Aren’t a Great Investmen

William Byrd

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For decades, Afghanistan’s mineral resources—estimated to be worth upward of $1 trillion—have interested the U.S. and other foreign powers. Afghan minerals have sometimes been billed as a potential geopolitical and economic justification for continued U.S. military engagement, as a source of money to pay for the cost of Afghan security forces, and even as a way to subsidize foreign private security forces to replace U.S. troops. None of these ideas, frequently criticized as impractical, have panned out.

Recently, the emphasis on “critical minerals” and the U.S. critical minerals strategy has revived some interest in Afghanistan as a potential source of strategic minerals. The Taliban authorities have signaled readiness for Western and U.S. investments in such resources, even as they have issued large numbers of mining contracts to Chinese and other companies.

However, Afghanistan is unlikely to become a high-priority country for major U.S. or other Western investments in extraction of critical minerals. It lacks a strategic advantage in comparison with other mineral-rich countries. Though the country has massive estimated (and some proven) solid mineral reserves, the obstacles to large-scale exploitation are daunting. There are logistical impediments that make most profitable large-scale mining operations implausible. Energy, transport, and other infrastructure present severe bottlenecks, and water—required for processing many minerals—is the country’s scarcest resource. As a low-income country with limited funds and weak institutions, Afghanistan is especially poorly equipped to deal with the serious environmental fallout associated with mining operations. And as a landlocked country, Afghanistan faces higher transport costs and more obstacles than countries closer to the main areas of demand or with access to the sea.

Additionally, there are structural impediments that discourage mining operations. The legal framework in Afghanistan is rudimentary and does not give international mining companies confidence. Afghanistan’s financial isolation from international banks and normal transactions in the wake of the 2021 Taliban takeover means that moving large amounts of money for major mining investments and their profits would be difficult. Finally, the Taliban’s reputational toxicity internationally—due to their draconian restrictions against women and girls and other human rights abuses—means that Western mining companies risk aggravating their shareholders if they choose to invest in Afghanistan.

Why the Strategic Emphasis on Critical Minerals?

Bangladesh Army Chief’s Final Warning To Yunus – OpEd

Subir Bhaumik

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Bangladesh Army Chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman’s stern warning to interim government chief adviser Muhammad Yunus on a host of national issues may be a prelude to a new phase in the country’s troubled political landscape.

Addressing ‘all available military officers ‘ at the Army headquarters on Wednesday, General Waqar-u-Zaman shed his usual cautious stance abd delivered an unambiguous message to Nobel laureate Yunus — hold early elections, stop interfering with military matters, and keep the military posted on key issues like the proposed Rakhine Corridor.

Describing Yunus’ proposed reforms agenda, which he seems to have used as an excuse to delay parliament polls, as a ‘ botched up exercise’ , General Waker declared that the national elections will have to be held by December this year.

After the ouster of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in August last year, Waker took the initiative to install the interim government but specifically mentioned that their primary job was to hold “a free, fair, and inclusive election”.

With the recent ban on the ruling Awami League, the prospect of am inclusive election has dimmed and that has upset Gen Waker-uz-Zaman.

The army chiet has repeatedly asserted that his job is to organise a free and fair election and then take the army back to the barracks after a transfer of power to the elected government.

He was not gone for a direct military takeover but focused on three tasks: restoring democracy, maintaining stability, and upholding the Bangladesh Army’s professional standards that made it one of the leading contributors to United Nations peacekeeping missions.

But this push has got him into a tussle with Yunus, who lambasts Hasina for rigging elections, but himself was to rule without wants to rule unelected.

Why the United States is Falling Behind Russia and China in Winning South Asia’s Nuclear Race

Hamna Tariq

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If the United States falls behind Russia and China in South Asia, it won’t just forfeit clean energy leadership—it will forfeit the future of nuclear diplomacy in the region.

South Asia is racing to meet its rising power demand, which is projected to triple by 2050, while reducing reliance on fossil fuels. India ambitiously plans for net-zero by 2070. Pakistan plans to generate sixty percent of its electricity from renewables by 2030. Bangladesh follows closely with a forty percent target by 2041. While solar and wind are part of the solution, nuclear power—an emissions-free, base-load, reliable energy source—is increasingly viewed in the region as essential to meeting these targets.

India and Pakistan have operated nuclear plants for decades, but both are now planning massive expansions. India aims to grow its nuclear capacity from seven GW to 100 GW by 2047, while Pakistan plans to build thirty-two nuclear reactors by 2050.

China and Russia are capitalizing on this. Russia’s Rosatom is constructing six reactors at Kudankulam in India. China has financed and built every operational civilian reactor in Pakistan and is providing over $5 billion in loans to cover the costs for the latest units of Karachi’s Nuclear Power Plant. China is also providing support to build Pakistan’s largest nuclear plant to date, the Chashma 5. In Bangladesh, Russia is building the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant, the country’s first.

These aren’t just energy projects. They’re long-term partnerships that bind South Asian countries to Chinese and Russian technology, financing, and fuel. Meanwhile, since building the Tarapur Atomic Power Station in India in the 1960s, the United States has not built or financially supported a single nuclear power plant in the region.

Measuring the US-China AI Ga

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China has stated its ambition to become the world leader in artificial intelligence (AI) by 2030, a goal that encompasses not only the performance of individual AI models that often attract significant media attention but also AI innovation broadly and widespread adoption of AI for economic and geopolitical benefit. Based on an analysis of key industry pillars informing the US-China competition for AI supremacy — including government and venture capital (VC) funding, industry regulation, talent, technology diffusion, model performance, and compute capacity — Insikt Group assesses that China is unlikely to sustainably surpass the United States (US) on its desired timeline. Currently, China either trails behind or does not clearly lead the US in any of these pillars. The US-China AI competition is likely to become tighter, with China's AI industry likely being a close second to the US globally and its AI models possibly outperforming the US at times or in some sectors. Chinese generative AI models likely lag behind US competitors by approximately three to six months as of this writing, based on Insikt Group analysis of publicly available Elo benchmarks, but potential new algorithmic breakthroughs along with agentic and collaborative AI systems could significantly sway the competitiveness of US or Chinese models before 2030.

China’s government has sought to accelerate the development of a world-leading, globally influential AI industry since 2017, when authorities adopted a dedicated plan for achieving this goal. DeepSeek’s unveiling of R1 in January 2025 was a key milestone in this endeavor. R1’s capabilities reflect — and support continuing — noteworthy advances and lines of effort within China’s AI ecosystem. China’s AI research community is very likely benefiting from the government’s supportive policy environment, government-led investment initiatives, access to an increasingly high-quality talent pool, and increasing links between academia and industry. Chinese AI companies like DeepSeek have realized performance gains by innovating and embracing open source. These companies have also become proficient at adopting techniques implemented by US peers and domestic rivals and prioritizing cost efficiency to remain competitive in domestic markets. Chinese open-source models are being adopted domestically and abroad, while inventors and organizations in China are filing more patents for generative AI applications in many key industries such as software, finance, and energy.

The Taiwan Tightrope Deterrence Is a Balancing Act, and America Is Starting to Slip

Oriana Skylar Mastro and Brandon Yoder

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As tensions rise across the Taiwan Strait, the policy debate in Washington remains fractured. U.S. strategy broadly revolves around deterring China from attacking Taiwan, and for the past three presidential administrations, it has consisted of three central components: increasing the ability of the United States and Taiwan to defend the island militarily; using diplomacy to signal U.S. resolve to protect Taiwan while also reassuring China that Washington does not support Taiwanese independence; and using economic pressure to slow China’s military modernization efforts.

But there is little consensus on the right balance among these three components—and that balance determines to some degree how deterrence looks in practice. Some contend that diplomatic pressure—along with military restraint, to avoid antagonizing China—will keep Beijing at bay. Others warn that unless Washington significantly strengthens its military posture in Asia, deterrence will collapse. And a third approach, outlined recently in Foreign Affairs by Jennifer Kavanagh and Stephen Wertheim, emphasizes that bolstering Taiwan’s self-defense and enabling offshore U.S. support is the best route to sustaining deterrence while also mitigating the risk of escalation.

These prescriptions have merit but fall short of grappling with the paradox at the heart of U.S. strategy: deterrence can fail in two ways. Do too little, and Beijing may gamble it can seize Taiwan before Washington is able to respond. Do too much, and Chinese leaders may conclude that force is the only remaining path to unification. Navigating this dilemma requires more than a stronger military or bolder diplomacy. It requires a calibrated strategy of rearmament, reassurance, and restraint that threads the needle between weakness and recklessness. Combined properly, forward-deployed capabilities, diplomatic restraint, and selective economic interdependence can reinforce one another to maintain credible deterrence while avoiding provocation.

Netanyahu accuses Starmer of being on 'wrong side of humanity' and siding with Hamas

Jamie McConkey & Yang Tian

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Israel's PM has accused the leaders of the UK, France and Canada of being on "the wrong side of history"

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has launched a blistering attack on UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and the leaders of France and Canada - saying that they had "effectively said they want Hamas to remain in power".

He also accused Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney of siding with "mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers".

Netanyahu was speaking after Thursday's deadly attack on Israeli embassy staff in Washington. Days earlier, the UK, France and Canada had condemned Israel's expanded offensive in Gaza as "disproportionate" and described the humanitarian situation as "intolerable".

In that post, Sir Keir called antisemitism an "evil we must stamp out".

All three countries denounced the Washington killings, which saw embassy workers Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, 26, shot dead at an event hosted by the Capital Jewish Museum.

The suspect, Elias Rodriguez of Chicago, repeatedly shouted "free Palestine" as he was arrested, police said.

Social media accounts linked to the suspect indicate that he was involved in pro-Palestinian protest movements. Investigators say they are working to verify online writings purportedly by him that accuse Israel of genocide in Gaza and criticise US policy.

According to details in an affidavit, the suspect landed in Washington the night prior to the event and bought a ticket a few hours before it started.

Make Moscow Pay The Case for Seizing Russian Assets to Fund Ukraine’s Defense

Wally Adeyemo and David Shimer

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As Russia continues its war against Ukraine and the Trump administration reduces U.S. aid to Kyiv, European countries have stepped up their support of the Ukrainian people. But more can be done. At this critical moment, the European Union should seize the immobilized Russian sovereign assets that sit in Europe and use those resources to provide Ukraine with a sustainable source of assistance.

In February 2022, just days after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the United States worked with the G-7 to freeze approximately $300 billion in Russian assets, the vast majority of which were held in Europe. Before the decision was made, some European countries raised economic and legal concerns, but they ultimately agreed. Over the course of the Biden administration—which both of us were a part of—the United States encouraged Europe to go one step further and seize Russia’s funds so that they could be put to use, as opposed to sitting frozen in accounts. But European leaders were unwilling to take this additional action: concerns similar to the ones raised several years earlier persisted.

Today, Europe should reconsider. The need to seize Russia’s sovereign assets is more urgent now than at any time since the war began. U.S. military aid deliveries to Ukraine from U.S. stockpiles, authorized during the Biden administration, will run out in the coming weeks, and the Trump administration has not announced renewed assistance for Kyiv. Russian President Vladimir Putin has rejected calls for a 30-day cease-fire and has stalled peace talks by making maximalist demands, presumably betting that Ukraine’s position will deteriorate as U.S. aid winds down and as China, Iran, and North Korea maintain their support for Russia.

Over the past three years, European countries have provided extraordinary support to Ukraine—more than the Kremlin ever expected. They have, for example, sent military and financial aid, implemented an unprecedented price cap on Russian oil, and enacted 17 sanctions packages against the Russian economy. But Europe will need to do even more to fill the void left by the United States. Europe cannot afford to see Russia triumph over Ukraine.

Trump Dumps Peace Talks

Mick Ryan

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In a certain sense, Putin is even right — to end the war in Europe, we really do need to eliminate its “root causes.” It’s just that the true “root causes” aren’t the existence of Ukraine as a state and as identity, as Russian war propaganda insinuates, but rather the existence of modern Russia itself — a country where, under the complacent gaze of weak Western democracies, a fascist, oligarchic regime has flourished. Illia Ponomarenko, 20 May 2025

The U.S. President, Donald Trump, had another conversation with Russia’s president today. The two-hour conversation focused primarily on Ukraine peace negotiations but also covered other topics related to the America-Russia relationship. Trump posted a precis of his conversation with Putin on social media. Putin issued a media release through his official website. Trump’s statement was more specific about issues discussed, while Putin offered a more general description of the call.

Today’s discussion between Trump and Putin probably indicates that we are at the start of a new phase in the Ukraine War, and in negotiations over war termination. This is an initial assessment of what occurred in the phone call, the key topics discussed, and what it means for the trajectory of the war.

What Were the Key Topics?

The first, and most important topic (at least to most of us) was the peace process in Ukraine. Trump wrote that Russia and Ukraine (note Trump always preferences Russia over Ukraine when he writes about the two) will “immediately start negotiations towards a ceasefire.” In his response to the phone call between Trump and Putin, and his call afterwards with Trump, the Ukrainian president describes how:

Putin Tries to Dodge Pressure For Ceasefire, But is Stuck in Tight Corner

Pavel K. Baev

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Talks in Istanbul between Russia and Ukraine on May 16 occurred under low expectations, resulting in high diplomatic posturing despite the discussions resulting in minimal progress

Western leaders have pushed for a ceasefire, prompting renewed engagement from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is trying to exploit Western divisions while resisting substantive compromise in peace discussions.

Putin is clinging to war ambitions and illusionary strength despite Russia’s economic strain and diminishing leverage. He rejects realistic peace plans, leaving him unprepared for future high-stakes negotiations.

The direct talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul on Friday, May 16, took place in an odd atmosphere of low expectations and high excitement. The talks predictably yielded little, while possibly altering the complex political maneuvering around Russia’s deadlocked war against Ukraine quite significantly. Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to present these talks simultaneously as a new initiative and as a continuation of the negotiations in spring 2022, which were broken at the stage of provisional drafts (see EDM, March 17, 22, 2022). The Russian delegation included the same third-level officials led by Putin’s aide, Vladimir Medinsky, but a new mandate was issued after a meeting in the Kremlin late evening on May 14 of all top officials and even the commanders of military groupings in the theater of war (President of Russia, May 14; Rossiiskaya gazeta, May 15). Neither the old format nor the new content has delivered the desired result, primarily because the war has evolved far from the failed blitzkrieg aimed at capturing Kyiv, while Putin’s ambition for subjugating Ukraine persists.

Russia Rejects Ukraine Ceasefire Initiative at Istanbul Meeting

Vladimir Socor

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On May 16, in Istanbul, Ukrainian and Russian negotiators met for the first time in more than three years of war to discuss a ceasefire.

The Kremlin rejected this Western-backed initiative, countered with an old set of ceasefire preconditions, and introduced more insurmountable conditions at the Istanbul meeting.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also hoped to use the Istanbul talks to arrange a personal meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin holds out the possibility of such a meeting contingent on Ukrainian ceasefire proposals acceptable to Russia.

Moscow portrays the Istanbul meeting and possible follow-up negotiations stemming from Russian-drafted “agreements” offered to Ukraine in Istanbul in March–April 2022. There were no such “agreements,” but Russia wants to incorporate parts of its own 2022 drafts into the terms of settlement.

On May 16, in Istanbul, Ukrainian and Russian negotiators met in person for the first time in more than three years of full-scale war to discuss a possible ceasefire-in-place. U.S. President Donald Trump had forcefully urged Kyiv and Moscow to hold this meeting with a few days’ advance notice. Kyiv’s closest European partners seconded Trump’s initiative, threatening Moscow with another round of European sanctions if it did not cooperate (EurActiv, May 10).

Ukrainian and Russian negotiators had last met face-to-face in Istanbul in March 2022, four weeks into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine (see EDM, March 17, 22, 2022). They had continued negotiations by videoconference between Kyiv and Moscow until late April 2022, referenced as the “Istanbul process.” Russian President Vladimir Putin has falsely claimed ever since that Kyiv had accepted the Russian-drafted terms of settlement. Moscow, therefore, portrays the resumption of talks as stemming from those alleged “agreements,” and wants any further negotiations to incorporate the draft documents from the 2022 Istanbul process (see below).

The US revenue implications of President Trump's 2025 tariffs

Warwick J. McKibbin

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President Donald J. Trump’s new tariffs could generate trillions of dollars in new federal government revenue over a decade, but the net gain would be reduced by the measures’ damaging effects on the US economy and the other economies’ likely retaliation. This PIIE Briefing uses a global economic model to assess the effects of US tariff increases of 10, 15, or 20 percentage points on all imported goods. The authors evaluate how the effects would differ depending on whether other economies do or do not retaliate by imposing the same tariffs on imported US goods.A 15 percentage point increase in universal US tariffs would generate $3.9 trillion in federal government revenue over a decade (2025-34) before accounting for its impact on the US economy and assuming no foreign retaliation. That total would be partially offset by lower tax revenue than otherwise from households and companies due to the tariffs’ economic impacts—including slower US growth and lower production, employment, and real wages. After accounting for those offsets, the net revenue gain would be $3.2 trillion over a decade. That net revenue gain would shrink further to $1.5 trillion if other economies retaliate.

A lower 10 percentage point tariff increase, combined with the economic effects and foreign retaliation, would generate a net revenue gain of $1.6 trillion. Higher tariffs do not necessarily yield more revenue.

Of these scenarios, the net gain would be lowest, $791 billion, under a 20 percentage point tariff increase, combined with the economic effects and foreign retaliation.

Under each of these three tariff rate scenarios, the United States would see lower GDP, investment, employment, and real wages over the following decade than otherwise—i.e., than without the tariff increases—and higher inflation over the initial two years.

The US sectors hit hardest would be agriculture, mining, and manufacturing because of their relatively high reliance on foreign demand for their exports. The harm would be amplified by retaliation from trading partners.

The Peterson Institute for International Economics has no partisan goal in publishing this research. Our objective is to educate policymakers and the public about the effects these policies would have on Americans and other people around the world.

Trump Gets the Middle East Right

Steven A. Cook

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President Donald Trump addresses the audience at the King Abdul Aziz International Conference Center while attending a Saudi-U.S. business investment forum, on May 13, 2025, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.President Donald Trump addresses the audience at the King Abdul Aziz International Conference Center while attending a Saudi-U.S. business investment forum.

A few weeks after taking the oath of office in 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden appeared at the State Department to give the first foreign-policy address of his new administration. During his talk, the new president famously declared that “America is back.” In this not-so-subtle rebuke of his predecessor, Biden was signaling that he was placing American values at the forefront of his foreign policy. As he promised in his campaign, there would be “no more blank checks” for the likes of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (Donald Trump’s “favorite dictator”) and the Saudis, who he vowed to make “them the pariahs that they are” and in the process make them “pay a price.”

Students of U.S. foreign policy—and cynics more generally—understood that Biden was going to eat his words in time. In May 2021, he was on and off the phone with Sisi, who won the White House’s gratitude for helping broker a cease-fire during a round of violence between Israel and Hamas. The following summer, Biden visited Saudi Arabia, where he fist-bumped the previously unacceptable Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Trump Discovers the War in Ukraine May Be Too Complicated to Fix

Simon Shuster

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President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, May 6, 2025. Francis Chung—Politico/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Coming out of his two-hour call with Vladimir Putin on Monday, Donald Trump made an unusual concession: Only Russia and Ukraine should be involved in talks to end the war between them, he wrote on social media, “because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of.” The admission of ignorance seemed out of character for a President who often claims to know more than anyone else about a great variety of subjects, and it may have set the peace process on a new and uncertain course.

From Putin’s point of view, the gaps in Trump’s knowledge about the war have always offered an advantage. One of the Russian leader’s favorite negotiating tactics is to overwhelm his interlocutors with a torrent of historical theories and cherry-picked facts. Ukrainian officials and their European allies have tried to prepare Trump for such conversations with Putin by offering their own views on the complexity of the war and its history, but they have often run up against a wall of ignorance about Ukraine within the Trump administration.

“They’re not read-in on a lot of the background,” says a Western official who has discussed Ukraine at length during visits to the White House. On the Ukrainian side, a diplomat put the same frustration in starker terms: “It’s this messianic attitude,” the diplomat says of the U.S. approach to Ukraine under Trump. “Like they know everything and don't want to hear anything.”

The Trump team's faulty command of the facts has at times been painfully obvious. In a call on Monday, Trump reportedly told a group of European leaders that Ukraine and Russia could begin ceasefire talks “immediately.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was also on the call, reminded him that these talks had begun a few days earlier, on May 16, in Istanbul. Trump’s apparent lapse in memory led to a moment of “puzzled silence” on the line, according to Axios, which reported the exchange.

The end of the affair: Trump's peace process fails What happens next?

Lawrence Freedman

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Donald Trump’s great push for peace between Russia and Ukraine ended with a whimper. After a two-hour call with Vladimir Putin on 19 May he claimed that a path to an immediate ceasefire had been set. Unfortunately, the only thing that was immediate was Putin contradicting his claim.

All this was in keeping with the spirit of Trump’s whole initiative- which has been delusional from the start. In his Truth Social post after this call he repeated two of his animating fallacies - that Putin wanted peace in the way that he wanted peace, and that once secured and normal relations with Russia restored then there were great economic deals to be done.

Trump had framed this as a problem that he, unlike Biden, would never have allowed to appear in the first place and one that only he, unlike Biden or indeed anybody else, could solve. Trump’s initial claim that he could end the war in 24 hours can be forgiven as a bit of routine hyperbole (he later described it ‘sarcasm’). Nonetheless this was the first test of his new foreign policy and it is one that he has failed, as tariffs have failed him in his new economic policy. He failed because he never really understood the underlying drivers of the conflict, believing that it was about little more than territory, because he underestimated Ukraine’s resilience, and because while he sensed that it might help if Russia was put under more pressure he could not bring himself to do so. His confidence in his personal combination of charm, bluster and bullying proved to be unwarranted.

He leaves the state of the war more or less as he found it. Russia is still inching forward trying to take Ukrainian towns it has been for well over a year, taking substantial casualties as it does so, while using Shahed drones to attack random Ukrainian targets, regularly killing civilians in the process. Ukraine is coping, better than many, including in Trump’s team, expected, although still at a high cost. The main consequences of Trump’s effort has been to demonstrate that Ukraine has an interest in an unconditional ceasefire and Russia does not, for Putin dare not let the war end with his political goals unmet. A negotiating track has emerged, although without a major change of heart by Putin it is unlikely to yield much progress. The Americans no longer appear to intend to play a part in it.

A Burst Of Diplomacy Brings No Breakthrough On Russia’s War Against Ukraine: What’s Next – Analysis

Steve Gutterman

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(RFE/RL) — A flurry of intense diplomacy over Russia’s war against Ukraine, centered around the first direct peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow in three years and a long phone call between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, ended earlier this week without a breakthrough.

The main objective set out by Ukraine and the West, a 30-day cease-fire, was not achieved.

Russian attacks continued during and after the talks, and Ukraine launched drone strikes on defense industry targets in Russia in the wake of the negotiations.

In a social media post after his two-hour-plus conversation with Putin, Trump suggested that the United States might be stepping back from efforts to broker a peace deal, four months after he entered office following a campaign in which he had said he could end the war in a day or two.

Now what?

With Russia’ full-scale invasion of Ukraine well into its fourth year, RFE/RL examines what to watch and where things may be headed.

More Talks? A Memorandum?

In his post on Truth Social after the phone call with Putin on May 19, Trump said negotiations between Russia and Ukraine “toward a cease-fire and more importantly, an end to the war” would start “immediately.” He mentioned the Vatican as a possible venue and concluded, “Let the process begin!”

There was no word from Kyiv or Moscow on a new meeting, but Finnish President Alexander Stubb said on May 21 that he sides were likely to hold “technical-level talks” next week, possibly at the Vatican.

Why Has Elon Musk Lost Interest In New Energy Vehicles? – Analysis

Xia Ri

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk has recently announced via X that the company is officially terminating its highly anticipated affordable electric vehicle (EV) project, the Model 2. Instead, Tesla will redirect resources towards AI and robotics. In an internal meeting, Musk bluntly stated that the Model 2 is a product of traditional thinking and that Tesla’s future lies in AI and robotics. This statement directly overturns the company’s core strategic plan of the past three years.

According to sources, the Model 2 was originally scheduled for release in June 2025, with a starting price of USD 25,000 and an ambitious annual sales target of 5 million units. The goal was to replicate the market success of the Toyota Corolla. However, Musk believes that building low-cost cars “won’t change the world,” and has chosen instead to invest in the autonomous robotaxi project and the humanoid robot initiative Optimus.

As early as Tesla’s Battery Day event in 2020, Musk first proposed the idea of developing an entry-level EV, targeting a price of USD 25,000, aiming to capture the mainstream consumer market. However, in late February 2024, after two years of back-and-forth discussions, he convened senior executives from various Tesla departments at the company’s headquarters in Palo Alto, California, with the fate of the Model 2 becoming the central topic of the meeting.

Many Tesla executives believed that the Model 2 could achieve multi-million-unit sales over the next few years, effectively offsetting potential losses from the robotaxi project and providing financial support for Musk’s AI ambitions. More importantly, the Model 2 and robotaxi could potentially be developed on the same platform. Nonetheless, Musk rejected the proposal. Instead, he again suggested reducing certain features of the Model Y to lower its price. Following the meeting, three senior executives who had advocated for continuing the Model 2 project abruptly resigned.

UK-EU Defense Pact: Strategic Shift Or Stopgap Fix? – Analysis

Paulo Aguiar

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The formalization of UK-EU security cooperation in the aftermath of Brexit, most notably institutionalized through the May 19, 2025 Strategic Partnership Agreement, represents a significant development in the architecture of European defense coordination. This article evaluates whether recent developments constitute a foundational transformation in UK-EU strategic relations in the post-Brexit period.

US Retreat and a New Geopolitical Context

To understand the rationale behind the renewed impetus for UK-EU security cooperation, it is necessary to contextualize the partnership within the broader reconfiguration of transatlantic security dynamics. The United States, long considered the cornerstone of European defense under NATO, has signaled a strategic pivot toward the Indo-Pacific and a reduced willingness to serve as Europe’s primary security guarantor. This shift, which includes calls for greater burden-sharing among NATO members and a decreased emphasis on forward deployment in Europe, has generated uncertainty among European policymakers.

In parallel, Europe faces heightened external threats, most notably the resurgence of Russian military assertiveness in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea region. The annexation of Crimea in 2014, followed by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, has challenged the stability of the European security order. These developments, coupled with the use of hybrid tactics such as cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns, have catalyzed renewed efforts at intra-European security coordination. The UK and EU, despite their formal separation post-Brexit, have been compelled by these converging threats to engage in functional security cooperation, not through integrationist mechanisms, but through coordinated, interest-driven frameworks designed to preserve autonomy while enhancing deterrence.

Structure of the EU-UK Deal

The institutional design of the EU-UK Security and Defence Partnership reflects a deliberate emphasis on flexibility and political discretion. Unlike binding defense treaties or supranational security arrangements, the partnership is structured as a modular, non-binding framework that allows for targeted cooperation in select areas, including cyber defense, crisis response, military mobility, and counter-hybrid threat operations.

America First: Means and Ends

Dennis Ross

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On tariffs and Iran nuclear negotiations, the Trump administration isn’t communicating what it actually wants.

Donald Trump may not be a conventional president, but there is one tradition in American foreign policy that he fits. “America First” may be his slogan—and clearly represented a movement in the 1930s to keep us out of war—but, in reality, it reflects a tradition that guided the United States in foreign policy from the time of our independence through most of the nineteenth century. We have never been isolationist. Rather, we were unilateralist. Alliances would limit our freedom of action. America’s founding fathers did not want to be bound to others, especially European powers, that would draw us into endless conflicts.

Commerce guided us, and it meant not just that we would engage with the rest of the world but that we often intervened militarily around the globe to protect our shipping, pry open possible markets, or ensure that we could not be excluded from them. Whether it was fighting the Barbary pirates off the “shores of Tripoli,” forcibly opening Japan to our trade, or sending marines to China at its end to save missionaries and also ensure that the United States received all the same commercial access that others had, America in the nineteenth century did not shy away from the use of force to protect our interests. It was global alliances that we resisted.

Moreover, while Thomas Jefferson believed our values were universal, he did not believe in imposing them. Like Jefferson, John Quincy Adams believed in our “exceptionalism” but also feared we would lose our character and our values if we sought to impose them internationally; as he put it in 1821:

But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign Independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication…She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.

Reimagining Our Warfighter

Chad Williamson

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“We have a vision of what our warrior looks like… a guy who’s six-foot-five, who can lift mountains. I’m not sure that’s exactly who we always need.”

— Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, 2025 National Security Innovation Base Summit, Ronald Reagan Institute

This wasn’t an offhand remark, it was a strategic provocation to rethink what national security demands in the 21st century. Chrissy Houlahan—an Air Force veteran and House Armed Services Committee member—was addressing the deeply ingrained mental image still shaping how we recruit, train, and evaluate military talent.

That image—the tall, muscled, physically dominant archetype—isn’t wrong, but it is incomplete. Especially now. Because the most consequential fights ahead may not require lifting mountains, but rather, lifting meaning.

Story as Strategy

Warfare has always had a cognitive dimension—how we think, how we interpret uncertainty, and the stories we tell ourselves about enemies and purpose. Today, that cognitive terrain isn’t just part of war—it is the battlefield.

Understanding this shift requires more than new tech—it demands new cognition. Major Christopher Mesnard, in his thesis at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, lays the groundwork for what he calls narrative-based decision-making. He defines narrative not as a communications tool, but as a cognitive function. As he writes…

“The mind thematically aligns stories and their elements into narratives, demonstrating a cognitive process that assists in an individual’s understanding of reality and the possible decisions which logically fit into that reality.”

This means that every warfighter—regardless of their domain or mission set—is, in some way, a narrative actor. Warfighters don’t just carry weapons, they carry worldviews. They don’t just execute orders, they embody stories about who matters, what matters, and what it means to win.

Here is why US troops may be in Iraq indefinitely

Tanya Goudsouzian

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When Arab leaders arrived in Iraq last week for the Arab League Summit, they were greeted by a city determined to impress.

Driving into the city from Baghdad International Airport, they passed the statue marking the spot where, on January 3, 2020, a U.S. drone strike killed Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Quds Force, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, commander of Iraq’s Kata’ib Hezbollah militia. The strike, carried out on Iraqi soil without the consent of the government, amplified demands for the withdrawal of U.S. and coalition forces.

These demands still reverberate in Iraq’s corridors of power — and its streets.

While negotiations were delayed for years, Coalition Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, the 30-nation force formed in 2014 to conduct military operations against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, finally agreed to terminate its mission and disband its headquarters in September 2025. Importantly, this does not fully end all foreign military presence in Iraq, as a provision in the agreement allows for continued military operations in Syria from an undetermined location until September 2026, as well as another provision that calls for “bilateral security partnerships in a manner that supports Iraqi forces and maintains pressure on ISIS.”

On these two provisions — continued operations against ISIS in Syria from an undetermined location (likely Northern Iraq/Kurdistan) and in-country bilateral security partnerships — there are significant disagreements within Iraq. Some Shia political and religious factions continue to push for a full and immediate withdrawal as do Iranian-backed paramilitary forces. Others argue that the international military support is critical, particularly considering the lingering threat posed by ISIS and regional instability such as developments in Syria.

One former senior official offers a frank assessment of the current landscape.

AI Is Eating Data Center Power Demand—and It’s Only Getting Wors

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AI’s energy use already represents as much as 20 percent of global data-center power demand, research published Thursday in the journal Joule shows. That demand from AI, the research states, could double by the end of this year, comprising nearly half of all total data-center electricity consumption worldwide, excluding the electricity used for bitcoin mining.

The new research is published in a commentary by Alex de Vries-Gao, the founder of Digiconomist, a research company that evaluates the environmental impact of technology. De Vries-Gao started Digiconomist in the late 2010s to explore the impact of bitcoin mining, another extremely energy-intensive activity, would have on the environment. Looking at AI, he says, has grown more urgent over the past few years because of the widespread adoption of ChatGPT and other large language models that use massive amounts of energy. According to his research, worldwide AI energy demand is now set to surpass demand from bitcoin mining by the end of this year.

The Hidden Cost of AI: Extractive AI Is Bad for Business

Ali Crawford, Matthias Oschinski, and Andrew J. Lohn

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The next big AI risk isn’t existential, it’s economic. Companies that extract workers’ expertise without consent may find themselves trading short-term speed for long-term value erosion.

The Chinese AI company DeepSeek recently sent shockwaves through the financial world, causing market chaos and sparking uncertainty among tech policymakers. OpenAI released a statement acknowledging potential evidence that DeepSeek trained its model on data generated by outputs from OpenAI’s GPT-4o model through a process called distillation. Simply put, DeepSeek is being accused of training its model on OpenAI’s model and benefiting from that transfer of knowledge. But before we ask whether DeepSeek stole from OpenAI, we should ask a deeper question: who did OpenAI take from?

OpenAI has been accused of illegally appropriating data in the form of news articles, stories, and even YouTube video transcriptions to power its models. Those models are trained on vast amounts of human-generated data, often without compensation or acknowledgement to the human creator. These practices are only lightly discussed at major international AI safety summits—such as those in the United Kingdom, South Korea, and more recently this past February in France—which tend to focus on whether AI might invent biological weapons, develop new cyberattacks, or if unseen model bias poses a threat to humanity. The silent transfer of value from creators to algorithms is emerging as one of the most overlooked economic risks of the AI boom. The truth is, people have already begun to express that they have been harmed by decisions to use or employ AI.

In a recent significant event, one of the first major labor disputes over the use of AI was observed in the 2023 Writers’ Guild of America (WGA) strike. While the main issue revolved around streaming services and residuals owed to writers, negotiations concerning the use of generative AI prolonged the strike, which has its own section in the WGA’s Minimum Basic Agreement (MBA). Essentially, the WGA advocated against company or studio use of AI to write or rewrite literary materials, and that AI-generated content cannot be used as source material, which would have implications for how writers receive credit for their original work. Additionally, the MBA gives the WGA the right to assert that the exploitation of writers’ work used to train an AI model is prohibited.