Trump’s Passage to India

Matthew Continetti

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Donald Trump’s diplomatic high-wire act never stops. The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas demands constant attention. The war between Russia and Ukraine is nowhere near a settlement. The trade war with China toggles off and on. U.S. forces target drug smugglers linked to Venezuela and Colombia.

As if all that weren’t enough, America risks alienating a key ally in our strategic competition with China.

The friend is India. A recent visit here as part of a delegation organized by the Hudson Institute and the India Foundation brought home the extent of the damage from tariffs, immigration restrictions, and most important, dealings with Pakistan. The Indian government, led by prime minister Narendra Modi, is struggling to understand and manage Trump’s sudden reversals, while the Indian public feels betrayed. The general sense is that the two democracies will weather the storm—but only if the United States comprehends the significance that India places on Pakistan, and acts accordingly.

Close ties between America and India weren’t and aren’t inevitable. They’re the result of strategic decisions on both sides. And they don’t come easily. After winning freedom from the British in 1947, India acted as the conscience of the Non-Aligned Movement, navigating an independent and often ambivalent course between West and East, between the Free World and the Communist bloc.

America found a more willing Cold War partner in Pakistan, the Muslim nation born out of partition from India, and against which India has fought four wars in 78 years. Pakistan served as an anti-Soviet check in South Asia. It acted as an intermediary between the United States and China. It was the staging ground for U.S. support for the mujahedeen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. The result was mistrust between America and India, a rare phenomenon for two countries that share common values, such as freedom and pluralism, as well as democratic institutions.

Things began to change at the approach of the millennium. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, around the time India opened its economy to free enterprise and foreign investment. Indian migration to the United States grew. And India became central to the back-office operations of major US corporations.

When both India and Pakistan joined the nuclear club in 1998, the subcontinent’s importance became undeniable. Still, habits are hard to break. America continued its tilt toward Pakistan.

President George W. Bush inaugurated an era of good feelings. India was a natural fit for a president whose term was defined by a global war on terrorism and championing democracy. Bush upgraded relations with India, and our two nations signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement. As part of the deal, India separated its military and civil nuclear programs, agreed to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and shared technology with the United States.

Veterans built an interactive map of Afghanistan to record 20 years of war

Built as an interactive map of Afghanistan, Project Athena is an archive that veterans can upload photos to, chronicling the war as they lived it next to the memories of others.

Clay Beyersdorfer

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A team of veterans have created an interactive map of Afghanistan that allows any vet to upload pictures and notes from the war as they remember it. Screen capture from Project Athena website

For a generation that lived the war in Afghanistan one grid square at a time, the war now feels like a series of dots on a map. A patrol base carved out of hardpan soil. A culvert on a highway that never felt safe. A ridge where the radio went quiet.

Nathan Kehler knows the pull of those dots. When he and a group of fellow veterans wanted to record the war they experienced, they knew all their stories would be easiest to see laid out on a map. They launched Project Athena — a visual map connecting the memories of soldiers to the coordinates where they occurred.

“War is chaotic, and when you’re a soldier on the ground, you rarely see the full picture,” said Kehler.

But putting memories — photos, names, notes — onto a map, and adding the memories of others, can fill out a picture of that war.

Kehler is Canadian and served as an armored reconnaissance soldier with the Royal Canadian Dragoons, then as a GeoTech with 2 Combat Engineer Regiment, the military’s map makers. He deployed to Afghanistan in 2009 in the Panjwayi district, and he left with memories that were specific and unfinished.

When he remembers the war, there is one day — and one grid coordinate — that stands out.

“I spent fifteen years wondering what the hell happened that day,” Kehler said. As his unit patrolled near the town of Chalghōr, outside of the town of Salavat, they were hit by a coordinated IED attack. One vehicle after another exploded as the mission turned to a fog of detonations and confusion.

Before Project Athena launched, he added photos and details of the engagement to the map. Three days after the project went live, a second entry appeared. An engineer uploaded a photo and a short account, one Kehler had never seen.

The missing piece snapped into place.

“That day was one of those moments that stayed with me for years because I never fully understood what had happened,” Kehler said. “Seeing it on the map, with someone else’s account from the same operation, finally connected the dots. It turned a fragmented memory into something I could understand, and there is real value in that.”

Xi’s Purges Reveal His Insecurity

BRAHMA CHELLANEY

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NEW DELHI – During his 13 years in power, Xi Jinping has steadily tightened his grip on all levers of authority in China – the Communist Party of China (CPC), the state apparatus, and the military – while expanding surveillance into virtually every aspect of society. Yet his recent purge of nine top-ranking generals, like those before it, shows that he still sees enemies everywhere.

After taking power in 2012, Xi launched a crackdown on corruption within the CPC and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The campaign was initially popular, because China’s one-party system is rife with graft and abuse of power. But it soon became clear that enforcement was highly selective – a tool not for building a more transparent or effective system, but for consolidating power in Xi’s hands. In Xi’s China, advancement depends less on competence or integrity than on earning the leader’s personal trust.

But even after more than a decade of promoting only loyalists, Xi continues to dismiss officials regularly, including top military commanders. According to the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence, nearly five million officials at all levels of government have been indicted for corruption under Xi. And this is to say nothing of those who simply disappear without explanation.

True to form, Xi’s regime claims that the military leaders swept up by his latest purge – including General He Weidong, a member of the Politburo, Vice Chair of the Central Military Commission, and the third-highest-ranking figure in China’s military hierarchy – committed “disciplinary violations” and “duty-related crimes.” But a more plausible explanation is that Xi is playing an interminable game of Whac-a-Rival, desperately trying to preserve his grip on power.

China Against China

Xi Jinping Confronts the Downsides of Success

Jonathan A. Czin

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Thirteen years after Xi Jinping ascended to the top of China’s leadership hierarchy, observers in Washington remain deeply confused about how to assess his rule. To some, Xi is the second coming of Mao, having accumulated near-total power and bent the state to his will; to others, Xi’s power is so tenuous that he is perpetually at risk of disgruntled elites ousting him in a coup. Xi’s China is either a formidable competitor with the intent, resources, and technological prowess to surpass the United States or an economic basket case on the verge of implosion. Depending on whom one asks, China’s growth model is either dynamic or moribund, relentlessly innovative or hopelessly stuck in the past.

Attempts to analyze Xi’s project have become even more convoluted in the wake of China’s slow recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. When Xi suddenly ended China’s draconian pandemic controls and reopened the country in late 2022, Wall Street did not debate whether China’s economy would come roaring back, but rather what letter of the alphabet—a V or a W—the graph charting the upward path of the recovery would resemble. When the economy sputtered, some in Washington concluded the opposite extreme: that China had peaked, its governance structure had failed, and that it would start to decline relative to the United States.

This analytic confusion has shaped U.S. policy toward China. At the start of the second Trump administration, officials claimed that China was the greatest threat to the United States yet seemed to believe that China’s economic strains were so severe that it would immediately cave in a trade war—a viewpoint reminiscent of Mao’s famous declaration that the United States was a “paper tiger” that appeared threatening but was in fact weak and brittle. The attempt to pressure China with tariffs failed. Beijing responded to Washington’s trade escalation in April 2025 by imposing retaliatory levies and cutting off the U.S. supply of rare-earth magnets. The Chinese economy’s ability to weather the trade shocks endowed Beijing with newfound confidence.

China’s BRI Revealed As Economic, Environmental Threat

Africa Defense Forum

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Jingjing Zhang is a lawyer and environmental activist who has fought Chinese companies that pollute for decades. Her work has brought her to many countries, where she says her native China is using a hazardous development model: Pollute now, get rich and attempt to clean up later.

In May, she visited Zambia to advise villagers whose lives were devastated when a toxic waste spill from a Chinese copper mine caused one of the country’s worst ecological disasters.

“Companies have a field day when they come here,” Andrew Kombe, a Zambian lawyer who is representing villagers, told Zhang, according to Inside Climate News. “They can do whatever they want.”

Amid widespread uproar in Africa over countries struggling to repay Chinese debt, a troubling pattern has emerged in the background of the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI): Chinese mining and construction companies on the continent are leaving a trail of environmental devastation.

Luwi Nguluka, director of communications for the Wildlife Crime Prevention organization in Zambia, said the two issues are intertwined. In her country, China holds 82 loans — more than any other country in Africa — totaling $9.5 billion.

“The government’s close relationship and financial dependence on China poses challenges to holding Chinese-owned mining companies fully accountable,” she told ADF, explaining that cleaning up and restoring the environment around the Sino-Metals Leach Zambia spill could take many years. “Lax oversight and regulation have been long-standing issues in Zambia’s mining sector.”

Kenya is another cautionary example of huge BRI loans giving Chinese infrastructure companies outsized influence that can harm natural resources.

Chinese banks and companies financed and built the Standard Gauge Railway, which sparked controversy for bisecting Nairobi National Park and crossing the Tsavo conservation area, which supports about 40% of Kenya’s elephant population.

The railway has fragmented habitats, disturbed migration routes and altered wildlife behavior. Mitigation measures like wildlife underpasses were included, but studies showed that they have been only partially effective, with elephants and other animals still struggling to cross safely.

“Linear infrastructure projects like the railway must develop sustainable and ecologically sensitive measures,” the late Tobias Nyumba, then a researcher with the University of Nairobi wrote for the Conversation. “For example, underpasses must be at the right density and of the right size. At present, the underpasses are few and are located in areas not used regularly by wildlife.”

The Miseducation of Xi Jinping

How a Father’s Struggle Revealed the Price of Power

Orville Schell

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Given the flood of books on China that has poured forth in recent years, one might think the rest of the world would have figured out that provocative country by now. But much of China’s historical evolution continues to defy Western understanding, and many of its leaders remain tantalizing conundrums—few more so than Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and the president of the People’s Republic of China. Having watched him up close on official trips, once in 2015 with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and once during U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2017 trip to China, I’ve encountered few leaders whose body language and facial expressions reveal so little about what’s going on inside their heads. With a Mona Lisa–like hint of a smile permanently etched on his face, Xi’s mien is hard to read.

Opacity may have been a skill Xi learned as a child, according to Joseph Torigian’s prodigiously researched epic The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping. Torigian quotes the Chinese historian Gao Wenqian, who suggests that after watching his father’s fall from grace within the CCP, Xi learned the art of “forbearance and concealing his intentions, not revealing anything.” Xi Zhongxun, a close colleague of Mao Zedong’s, had been intensely loyal to both the party and its revolution, only to be repaid with political persecution, abuse, imprisonment, and domestic exile. This was the world in which Xi Jinping came of age.

As Torigian observes, the history of internal CCP dynamics confronts scholars, especially those not from China, with “one of the most difficult research targets in the world.” Not only do they have to contend with the formidable language barrier, but the CCP is so sensitive about having its dirty laundry aired in public that it goes to great lengths to distort its historical record with propaganda and to keep embarrassing documents off-limits. The result is an official history that is immaculately well scrubbed and ordered lest it reveal any fallibility.

But peek behind the veil, and a different reality reveals itself: a dog-eat-dog world of power struggles, artifice, hubris, treachery, and duplicity—yet also an enormous amount of sacrifice. By limning the life of Xi Zhongxun in such extraordinary detail, Torigian helps readers see behind the veil and understand the political crucibles in which father and son were “forged,” the term both use to describe how they were shaped by revolutionary hardship and struggle.

Taiwan, China, World War Two and its aftermath

Reuters

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China said on Wednesday it would hold a ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of the "retrocession" of Taiwan to Chinese rule at the end of World War Two.

Here is a timeline about Taiwan, China, the war and its aftermath:

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1895 - Defeated in the First Sino-Japanese War, China's Qing dynasty signs the Treaty of Shimonoseki ceding sovereignty over Taiwan to Japan.

1911 - The Qing dynasty is overthrown in a revolution and the following year the Republic of China is declared.

1927 - Chinese Communist Party stages an uprising against the government, viewed as the start of China's

1946 - Truce between republican and communist forces collapses and the Chinese civil war resumes.

1947 - An uprising in Taiwan against the ruling Republican Chinese government follows tensions over social, cultural and political issues, and is bloodily put down.

1949 - Chiang retreats to Taiwan after Mao wins the civil war and establishes the People's Republic of China. Mao vows to "liberate" the island.

1951 - Japan signs the San Francisco Peace Treaty renouncing its claims to Taiwan, but the island's sovereignty is left unresolved in the document. Beijing says the treaty is "illegal and invalid", since it was not a party to it.

1952 - Treaty of Peace between the Republic of China and Japan signed, reaffirming Japan's renunciation of its claims to Taiwan, which the government in Taiwan says is confirmation of the previous transfer of sovereignty to the Republic of China.

To this day, the governments in Taipei and Beijing do not officially recognise each other.

Republic of China remains Taiwan's formal name.

Sources - Taiwanese, Chinese governments.

Taiwan Is Not for Sale

America Can Make a Good Deal With China Without Abandoning the Island

Marvin Park and David Sacks

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MARVIN PARK is Senior Vice President at American Global Strategies. He served as Director for Taiwan Affairs on the National Security Council from 2023 to 2024 and as U.S. Naval Attaché at the American Institute in Taiwan from 2016 to 2019.

DAVID SACKS is Fellow for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.More by Marvin 

When U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in the coming weeks and months—likely starting next week at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in South Korea—the immediate focus will be on how to de-escalate the latest round of export restrictions and tariff threats that the United States and China have wielded against each other. But Trump and Xi are also likely to consider a more ambitious deal to reset bilateral relations, which would seek not only to stabilize economic ties but also to reevaluate geopolitical flash points—above all, Taiwan. Indeed, this

A Grand Strategy of Reciprocity

How to Build an Economic and Security Order That Works for America

Oren Cass

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The United States has pursued two grand strategies in the 80 years since World War II. One was an extraordinary success: the policy of “containment” that guided American economic investments, foreign relations, and military deployments during the Cold War, which led to the defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the United States as the world’s lone superpower.

The same cannot be said, unfortunately, about the strategy adopted at the Cold War’s conclusion: an attempt to leverage superpower status to establish a “liberal world order” that Washington would secure and dominate. That strategy went by

OREN CASS is Founder and Chief Economist of American Compass and the editor of The New Conservatives: Restoring America’s Commitment to Family, Community, and Industry.More by Oren Cass

Exorbitant Pillage Can the U.S. Dollar Survive the U.S. Government?

Lael Brainard

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LAEL BRAINARD is a Distinguished Fellow at the Psaros Center at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center. She has served as Director of the National Economic Council, Vice Chair and Governor on the Federal Reserve Board, and Undersecretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.More by Lael Brainard

The U.S. dollar has dominated the global economy for more than seven decades. Roughly 90 percent of foreign exchange transactions today involve the dollar. The overwhelming share of international trade—including 74 percent in Asia and 96 percent in the Americas—is priced in U.S. dollars. Dollars account for 58 percent of central bank reserves held outside the United States. Around the world, private holdings heavily favor dollar-denominated assets.

Dollar dominance yields important benefits for the United States. It reduces price volatility in U.S. foreign trade, enables Washington to borrow expansively and at relatively low cost, and gives the U.S. government powerful tools for sanctioning its adversaries. And as the renowned economist Kenneth Rogoff convincingly argues in his highly engaging new book, Our Dollar, Your Problem, a dominant currency is incredibly difficult to displace. Inertia is a powerful force keeping the dollar on top; the strength of U.S. political and financial institutions is another. And although numerous countries have chafed against the dollar system, none have offered an alternative strong enough to overcome the dollar’s incumbency advantages. But Rogoff also warns that dollar dominance may have reached its peak, suggesting the United States will need to craft its policies with care if it is to hang on to its privileged position.

Successive U.S. administrations have adopted policies that shored up or at least avoided undermining the dollar’s dominance. They respected the independence of the Federal Reserve and the United States’ international commitments, including its role as steward of the global financial system. The Trump administration, however, is attacking the institutional foundations that underpin the dollar’s status. It is testing the bounds of executive power and receiving little pushback for doing so. It is attempting to weaken the independence of the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy authority and of the government’s official statistical agencies. And it is questioning the United States’ commitments to its allies and partners.

The Trump administration is taking these steps at the same time that it is introducing policies whose sustainability depends on maintaining the dollar’s privilege, particularly the massive spending bill President Donald Trump signed in July and which is projected to astronomically increase the U.S. national debt in the next decade. If dollar dominance erodes, Washington’s borrowing power erodes, too, and the cost of servicing its debt rises. And if a spike in interest payments on the federal debt combines with a swoon in the value of the dollar, the U.S. government could find its fiscal options constrained in ways that could inflict lasting damage on the economy.

How Russia Recovered

What the Kremlin Is Learning From the War in Ukraine

Dara 

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Illustration by Vartika Sharma; Photo Sources: Reuters, Getty Images

The story of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been one of upset expectations and wild swings in performance. At the start of the war, most of NATO saw Russia as an unstoppable behemoth, poised to quickly defeat Ukraine. Instead, Russia’s forces were halted in their tracks and pushed back. Then, outside observers decided the Russian military was rotten, perhaps one counterattack away from collapse. That also proved incorrect—Ukrainian offensives failed, and Moscow resumed its slow advance. Now, plenty of people look beyond Russia to understand the state of the battlefield, blaming Kyiv’s troubles on insufficient external

The Gaza Deal And The Missed Opportunity For US Unity

Dalia Al-Aqidi

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The world watched in awe as US President Donald Trump’s peace deal last week brought an end to the devastating war in Gaza. After two years of bloodshed, hostage crises and humanitarian suffering, the guns finally fell silent. Arab leaders, world powers and millions of ordinary people celebrated a long-awaited moment of relief and hope.

Yet, as much of the world celebrated this long-awaited step toward peace, the reaction within the US exposed a deeper truth about the nation itself — it is so polarized by partisanship that even the promise of peace could not bridge its political divide.

From Cairo to Riyadh and Jerusalem to Washington, the agreement was welcomed as a turning point. Arab leaders praised Trump’s leadership for restoring diplomacy to a region that had lost faith in it. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi called the deal “a historic, defining moment.” Leaders from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan and Morocco hailed the ceasefire as a long-overdue step toward regional stability and humanitarian recovery.

Even long-time skeptics admitted that this deal achieved what countless attempts before it could not: it brought an end to the war and opened a path to stability. It did not emerge in a vacuum but was grounded in the legacy of the Abraham Accords. Those accords changed the Middle East’s diplomatic map by proving that peace and partnership could replace endless hostility.

While much of the world celebrated, America’s response was deeply divided. Republicans across the country praised the agreement as a landmark achievement in diplomacy and a testament to the president’s leadership. They argued that Trump had once again delivered what others only spoke of: real progress toward peace through strength, resolve and a clear understanding of the region’s realities. To them, the deal was not just a political win but proof that principled leadership could accomplish what years of cautious diplomacy had failed to do.

But the Democratic Party, instead of joining the world in celebrating this historic moment, chose silence and, in some cases, open doubt. Many of its leaders downplayed the importance of the agreement and were unwilling to acknowledge what had been achieved. Rather than recognize a rare victory for peace, they focused on politics. Some even dismissed the deal as “temporary” or “election-driven,” as if stopping the bloodshed and saving innocent lives were not reason enough for gratitude. Their reaction showed how deeply politics has divided America, even when peace should have united everyone.

Progressive figures such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her allies could not bring themselves to welcome the simple fact that the war had finally stopped. Instead of showing relief that lives were being saved, they used the moment to attack the administration by accusing it of hypocrisy and of ignoring what they called “injustice.” Their response made it clear that ideology, not humanity, guides much of today’s political debate. By refusing to see peace as a good thing simply because it came from the other side of the political aisle, they showed how deeply partisanship has replaced both common sense and compassion in America’s public life.

Trump’s Pressure On The Federal Reserve Risks A US Debt Crisis

Fair Observer and Jiahao Yuan

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After a strong rally in the S&P 500 in August, the US stock market entered September, a typically weak month, with a slight correction. Over the past decade, September has been the worst-performing month for the S&P 500, with an average return of just -0.6%. The index has declined in September in six of the past 10 years.

The most direct trigger for this decline was the latest report released by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics on September 5. According to the report, non-farm payrolls increased by only 22,000 in August, far below market expectations of 75,000, indicating a significant slowdown in job growth, possibly even stagnation.

Furthermore, the employment figures for June and July were revised downward by a combined 21,000, further confirming the deteriorating labor market trend. As a result, market expectations of a rate cut by the Federal Reserve at its meeting on September 17 rose sharply, leading to a decline in the US dollar index and a surge in spot gold prices.

The recent slowdown in US job growth can be primarily attributed to two factors: first, the Trump administration’s comprehensive imposition of import tariffs, which has led to a sharp increase in business costs and discouraged hiring; and second, tightened immigration enforcement, which has directly reduced the labor supply.

Despite a 0.3% month-over-month increase in average hourly earnings, signs of a cooling overall job market are clear. Beyond the non-agricultural data, other labor market indicators are also flashing red flags, including a slowdown in private sector hiring, rising initial unemployment claims, increased layoff announcements and, for the first time in four years, a situation in which job seekers outnumbered job openings. This suggests a labor market stalemate characterized by “low hiring and low layoffs”, with liquidity nearing a standstill.

Concerns over job growth in specific sectors showed significant divergence. Healthcare and social assistance continued to be the primary drivers of job growth, adding 31,000 and 16,000 jobs, respectively. However, federal government employment was sure to be the primary drag, declining by 15,000 in August and totaling 97,000 since its peak in January.

Furthermore, wholesale trade employment continued to decline, falling by 12,000. This stagnant state of low liquidity is highly unstable; in the event of an external shock, unemployment is likely to soar rapidly, thus creating greater macroeconomic uncertainty.

United States-China Trade Tension Escalates: Testing Times For India

Institute of South Asian Studies

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Recent escalations in United States-China trade tensions increase worries for India. With both committing and non-committing to having high prices, India faces tough policy choices.

The trade friction between the United States (US) and China has escalated in the run-up to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting scheduled in Seoul at the end of October 2025. This increases worries for India, which is struggling to manage impacts of high US tariffs. Even if the current tensions are dissolved, India, like many other middle powers and large economies of the world, will have to be prepared to cope with the multiple downsides of the rivalry.

The latest friction comprises China expanding curbs on export of rare earths and introducing controls on foreign production of rare earths consisting of Chinese materials. New controls have been announced for use of Chinese rare earths and processing technology in foreign defence and military use and semiconductors and their re-export. A global licensing system will kick in on 1 December 2025 to screen the use of rare earth magnets and critical materials sourced locally from China and further used in any supply chains.

The US’ reaction to the Chinese curbs has been predictably aggressive. President Donald Trump announced 100 per cent additional tariffs on Chinese exports. The retaliation comes on the back of both countries increasing the docking fees for ships made or run by the other, in their ports, in an ostensible effort to reduce each other’s control over global shipping services.

While reciprocal tariffs on countries with whom the US had cut deals begun getting implemented from August 2025, those for China were held back for 90 days. The truce was timed by factoring in a meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the APEC summit. It is not clear yet whether the leaders will meet at APEC after the current muscle-flexing.

Neither China nor the US are backing down from a raw display of their respective economic might and the desire to control the global market, trade and strategic supply chains. The US’ weaponization of tariffs and export of chips has now been ‘complemented’ by China’s weaponisation of its near-monopoly control over global rare earth supply chains. The fight is unlikely to end if both presidents meet at Seoul. Both will keep working towards chipping away each other’s strategic ambitions. Newer geoeconomic tactics will be employed leading to greater fragmentation of critical supply chains and reorientation of global trade.

The weaponising tactics and their impact on supply chains and global trade have major implications for the world, including India.

Both the US and China will try persuading, or coercing, their trade partners, especially large ones like India, to make concessions favouring them more beneficial at the expense of the other. India stands at a crossroads in this regard.

India has not yet been able to cut a trade deal with the US. Its relations with the US have stumbled due to the US imposing high tariffs and its sudden bonhomie with Pakistan. On the other hand, despite a recent thaw in India’s ties with China resulting in resumption of direct flights and tourist visas, the trust deficit continues to prevail.

How Europe Is Still Fueling Russia’s War Machine

Ilan Berman

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This year, imports of Russian energy actually increased in seven major European countries.

These days in Europe, there is a near-unanimous consensus about the threat posed by Russia and the need to continue to support Ukraine against Moscow’s aggression. But Europe’s steadfastness could be undermined by a different factor—a sustained and growing dependence on Russian energy among a number of its members. Indeed, as a new analysis by Reuters lays out, seven European states (France, the Netherlands, Romania, Belgium, Croatia, Portugal, and Hungary) actually increased their imports of Russian energy over the past year.

The data is striking. In the Netherlands, dependence on Russian energy has surged by some 72 percent, to €498 million ($580 million) since 2024. In France, it rose by 40 percent, reaching €2.2 billion ($2.56 billion). In Croatia and Romania, it has increased by 55 percent and 57 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, Portugal’s imports of Russian energy have truly skyrocketed, jumping by 167 percent between 2024 and 2025.

What accounts for this rise? When it comes to Hungary, the answer is obvious. Since he assumed the premiership in 2010, Viktor Orban has distinguished himself as an erstwhile ally of the Kremlin. He has, among other things, rhetorically backed Russia’s war against Ukraine, sought to undermine alliance consensus within NATO, and tried to block European sanctions on Moscow. Hungary, in other words, has made clear where it stands politically—and buying a greater share of Russian energy is entirely consistent with this policy.

But none of the other countries mentioned by Reuters enjoys such close ties to Russia. To the contrary, many of them (in particular, France) are leading the charge to isolate and punish the Kremlin. As such, their recent consumption patterns are both puzzling and alarming.

Critical Minerals and Hard Power

Andrew Latham

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The Growing Canada-U.S. Connection

President Trump’s 100% tariff threat against Chinese imports is being framed as just another fusillade in an escalating trade war between Washington and Beijing. It isn’t. It is the latest move in a sharper contest over who controls the critical-minerals value chain that runs upstream from today’s sources of hard power—from the neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnets inside precision-guided munitions to the heavy rare earth oxides that make active electronically scanned array radars sing. Beijing has moved to tighten export controls on rare earths, magnets, and key processing technologies, using the weapon of licensing to cover goods that contain more than trace amounts of Chinese content or may have been processed by Chinese facilities. Ottawa can’t afford to see this as distant noise. Canada sits squarely in the blast radius—and just as squarely on the solution set.

The strategic logic is simple. China has worked for years to knit together dominance from mine head to magnet shop, and now it is moving to police outflows with a ruleset that is a functional analogue to the Foreign Direct Product Rule that Washington has long enforced in the U.S. defense market. That means the chokepoint is no longer just ore or oxide; it is the knowledge, tooling, and compliance risk associated with any product that has been touched by Chinese inputs or has been through Chinese processes. Licenses can be granted—and also slowed, narrowed, or denied—inserting friction precisely where Western defense planners need predictability. When Washington answers with tariff threats, it is not haggling over container-ship prices; it is signaling that supply chains for defense-critical materials are now national security goods and that economic instruments will be used accordingly.

For the United States and NATO, the clock is already ticking. New U.S. rules will phase in a prohibition on Chinese-origin rare-earth magnets in defense systems by January 1, 2027, extending the restriction across the entire magnet supply chain—from mined material through sintered magnet—thereby forcing prime contractors to certify non-Chinese provenance or risk program disruption. The intention is clear: de-risk weapons programs before licensing games and legal exposure cause line-down delays. Canada’s defense industry, integrated at every level with U.S. primes, is therefore implicated whether we like it or not. If a Canadian component contains Chinese-origin magnet material, it becomes a liability under Pentagon rules and a headache for any aerospace or shipbuilding line with U.S. end-use.

The Army wants drones that understand ‘commander’s intent’

That’s part of a draft UAS strategy that calls for a new career field, new advanced training, and soldier-built drones.

BY MEGHANN MYERS

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Cheap, self-driving drones that don’t require a whole fire team to launch them are a cornerstone of the Army’s forthcoming UAS strategy, which will focus on “universal interoperability and autonomy,” according to the service’s top aviator.

The service’s next generation of drone training and operation will include a new military occupational specialty that merges operators and maintainers, as well as a new advanced course that standardizes training across the force. Right now, they’re looking for software that will enable drones to take orders rather than be flown.

“You know, gone are the days where a drone operator is actually being a pilot, where they have to be hands on the sticks all the time,” Maj. Gen. Clair Gill said at last week’s AUSA annual meeting in Washington, D.C. “Now we've got autonomous capability where we can even use large language models to tell it what to do — but we basically program it, tell it what to do, and then, you know, the algorithms, in a very disciplined fashion, execute it.”

Right now, it takes four soldiers to launch a drone ambush, the deputy commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division said, with one flying it, one pulling security, someone carrying the equipment, and someone setting up antennas.

But “that’s the wrong math,” Brig. Gen. Travis McIntosh said on the same panel. “Let me give you a threshold that's easy to understand: when we can fly drones by command, not by pilot. When your drones can understand commander's intent—that, ladies and gentlemen, is the threshold for AI autonomy to help us.”

McIntosh’s soldiers recently debuted a homegrown drone dubbed Attritable Battle Field Enabler 101—or ABE, named after the “screaming eagle” mascot of the 101st. Instead of the $2,500-a-pop commercial drones on the market, McIntosh said, his troops are training on this cheaper $740 model.

Now they need a software program that can fly the drone and help it make decisions about where to drop grenades.

“We've also laid the foundation today for an uncrewed vehicle control software capability that's able to provide common software interface, common view, if you will, and common control to UAS across the board,” said Brig. Gen. David Phillips, head of the Army’s Program Executive Office for aviation.

At the same time, Gill said, the Army has finished a draft of its forthcoming UAS strategy.

Some changes already underway include a new MOS, 15X, that will combine the 15W drone operator and 15E drone maintainer jobs.

“I can't overstate or underscore enough the cultural shift that had to take place for these 15-series soldiers, because the 15X is designed to be embedded in maneuver elements, so they need to be able to operate in the same capacity as [those] combat arms soldiers standing next to them,” he said.

Gill’s team at Fort Rucker, Alabama, has also developed what they’re calling the UAS Advanced Lethality Course, where soldiers from backgrounds in infantry, artillery, cyber, Special Forces, armor and more will learn how to operate drones with the Army’s latest doctrine.

“We're getting ready to run our second iteration,” he said. “As soon as we get the government going again, we're ready to export that course.”

Hamas’ Post-Ceasefire Strategy

Atar Porat

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Make no mistake, Hamas intends to live another day and continue its rule over Gaza.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya initially rebuffed President Trump’s peace initiative, which would have required Hamas to disarm with few guarantees from Israel for an end to hostilities. The proposal reached Hamas through negotiators from Qatar and Egypt. Al-Hayya’s refusal shifted only after Egypt and Qatar warned him that this offer represented Hamas’ final opportunity for organizational survival.

Retaining Israeli hostages provided strategic legitimacy for Israel’s ongoing campaign, which persisted despite criticisms at home. Israel’s leadership demonstrated clear determination to pursue the Gaza City operation, even knowing that hostages were being used to impede military advances. This credible military threat, fused with mounting diplomatic pressure, compelled Hamas leadership to reconsider its position.

Regional mediators—Qatar, Turkey, and Egypt—changed their approach only after President Trump incentivized cooperation. Qatar received an executive order from the White House guaranteeing protection from future Israeli military action, effectively a quasi-Article Five security assurance, alongside permission for a new Qatari air force facility at a US military base in Idaho.

Turkey may have been promised the easing of US sanctions and access to F-35 aircraft, modernizing its air force after years of exclusion from US fighter programs. Egypt regained its status as chief mediator and hosted the postwar summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, reclaiming its centrality in regional diplomacy.

This sequence proved what many in Israel had believed: these states held leverage over Hamas but had not exercised it, either due to their alignment with Hamas or the absence of clear incentives. The Wall Street Journal confirmed that Turkey and Qatar threatened to expel Hamas’ leadership from their countries. At the same time, Egypt, responding to US pressure, agreed to stop lobbying for a Hamas role in postwar Gaza.

Hamas publicly accepted the initial phases of President Trump’s plan but refused to disarm. Hamas spokesman Bassem Naim has previously insisted before the ceasefire that Hamas would not surrender its weaponry, emphasizing that armed jihadist groups do not simply abandon the core tenet of their organizational survival.

The future governance of Gaza remains the principal dispute under the agreement. While Hamas has claimed it may hand over “offensive” weapons such as rocket launchers—claims that should be scrutinized carefully—it has explicitly refused to give up light weaponry, which it wields to control rivals and punish collaborators. In the interim, Hamas is reasserting its dominance on the streets through paramilitary units like Sahem and terrorizing potential rivals.

Hamas’ best long-game strategy is to push for representation in whatever Palestinian governance structure emerges, along with other Palestinian factions. The Donald Trump peace plan includes a proposal for a “temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee.” However, the effective result could be similar to the pre-war Lebanese model, where a de jure Lebanese state existed alongside a powerful Hezbollah.

When Czech populists win, that’s nothing peculiarly “east European”. It’s the new normal of the Western world

Timothy Garton Ash

Source LInk

The likely new government in Prague will add one more state opposed to the EU’s green deal, and migration and asylum pact

Leader of the ANO movement, Andrej Babis holds a press conference at ANO headquarters after the polling stations of Czech elections closed in Prague, Czech Republic on October 4, 2025

If you open your window on a quiet street in central Prague, the first sound you hear is the trrrrk-trrrrk-trrrrk of carry-on suitcases trundling across paving stones, as tourists walk to their hotel or Airbnb (the Czech capital had 8 million visitors last year). As they trek around Prague Castle and fill the Old Town bars with cheerful chatter, these visitors—many of them probably unaware of the recent election victory of right-wing populist nationalist parties—may think this is just another normal European country. And you know what: they will be right.

Some more extensively informed newspaper commentators, reaching for an attention-grabbing generalisation, tell a different story. This is eastern Europe reverting to type, they say. After Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, now the Czech Republic as well! The truth is more interesting—and more worrying.

Thirty-six years ago, at the time of the “velvet revolution” in autumn 1989, people in Prague would constantly tell me they just wanted theirs to be a “normal” country. By normal, they meant like Britain, France, (West) Germany, Italy or Spain. Well, now it is. It’s just that the normality has shifted in the meantime. Back then, the prevailing Western normal was liberal, internationalist, pro-European; now it’s increasingly anti-liberal, nationalist and Eurosceptic. In the Czech election campaign, the incumbent prime minister, Petr Fiala, tried to mobilise Czech voters by asking: “Do we want to move towards the east or towards the West?”. But what does that mean, when the west is the US president, Donald Trump, and the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, not to mention Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) and France’s National Rally (RN) all currently leading in opinion polls?

The likely next prime minister, Andrej Babis, leader of the election-winning Ano (“Yes”) party, is a billionaire businessman who has used his great wealth to make a remarkable political career. He has already been prime minister from 2017-21. Troubled by legal proceedings for allegedly corrupt past dealings, he is not a man of deep ideological convictions but an “entrepreneurial populist” who goes where the votes are. Remind you of anybody? Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi perhaps? Or Trump.

Can Trump Contain Israel’s Hard Right?

Yair Rosenberg

Source LInk

When Donald Trump arrived in Israel last week to celebrate his Gaza agreement, Israelis of all stripes fell over themselves to thank him for his efforts to end the war and bring hostages home. The Knesset was lit up in red, white, and blue; its members gave the president a two-and-a-half-minute standing ovation when he arrived. A Tel Aviv beach was decorated with a giant silhouette of his face. Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, announced that Trump would be awarded the country’s Presidential Medal of Honor, its highest civilian commendation. But one notable person didn’t join the festivities. In fact, she boycotted them.

The day before, Limor Son Har-Melech, a far-right member of Parliament, had declared that she was “not interested in joining the applause” and announced that she would not attend the president’s Knesset speech. “President Trump presented the current deal as a peace agreement,” she wrote. “It is not. It is a shameful agreement.” Har-Melech’s outrage was sharp but not surprising. Since October 7, 2023, she had been one of the chief advocates for the Israeli resettlement of Gaza. Just two months after the Hamas massacre, she said she told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “the only image of victory in this war is that we will see Jewish homes in Gaza. Victory will be when we see the children of Israel playing in the streets of Gaza.”

Polls showed that most Israelis opposed this land-grabbing plan. But Netanyahu was beholden for his political future to the radical minority that supported it, and constantly catered to their whims. As the war in Gaza dragged on, and Israel plunged deeper into the Palestinian territory, the settler right appeared poised to obtain its prize. Trump called to “clean out” Gaza and relocate its population to make way for a “Riviera of the Middle East.” Nearly two dozen lawmakers in Netanyahu’s coalition signed a letter to Israel’s defense minister urging him to permit activists into Gaza itself to scout possible settlement locations.

The pieces were falling into place. That is, until Trump halted the war and imposed a peace plan that explicitly rejected any Israeli territorial designs on Gaza.

It wasn’t supposed to go this way. When Trump was reelected, members of the Israeli right rejoiced, believing that he would happily facilitate their aspirations. Instead, he has begun to frustrate them. The first blow came on September 25, when the president categorically ruled out any attempt to extend Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank, which Palestinians claim for their future state. “I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “It’s not gonna happen.” The president’s Arab allies had made clear that annexation could shatter the Abraham Accords forged in Trump’s first term; faced with the potential unraveling of one of his signature achievements, the president acted quickly to curb the Israeli right’s ambitions.

Rebuilding Gaza—From Camps to Communities

Shelly Culbertson, Kobi Ruthenberg, and Rob Lane

Source Link

In the wake of the fragile ceasefire, thousands of Gazans have trekked home to find ruin. This highlights an unavoidable question: After all the destruction, where can Gazans live? The 20-point proposal to end to the war in Gaza brokered by the White House put it succinctly: “No one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return. We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza.”

Yet sustaining 2.2 million people within Gaza’s 140 square miles while rebuilding faces many challenges. The wreckage is almost incomprehensible: at least 62 percent of housing is gone or beyond repair, and more is damaged. There are some 51 million tons of rubble laced with thousands of unexploded bombs.

A woman stands in the doorway of a damaged building in the northern Gaza Strip on October 16, 2025. Tensions rose after Israel said aid convoys would ...Read More

Within this context, housing the Gazans will require a radical new approach to post-war reconstruction. But it is possible. We developed a comprehensive plan for post-conflict housing in Gaza. It is possible to immediately shelter the displaced Palestinians while also laying the groundwork for permanent, well-planned communities.

The first thing that needs rethinking is the role and location of camps, where most Gazans will need to reside in the near term. Although camps are a suboptimal solution, the scale of the destruction in Gaza and numbers of people involved mean they are inevitable. In theory, camps are temporary, but they often become permanent, evolving into urban slums as residents construct buildings where their tents once stood.

The Middle East has many cautionary examples of “temporary” camps gone awry. Gaza had eight that were set up in 1948 and 1967 that lasted; before the recent war, they had some of the highest population densities in the world. Pathways between tents turned into roads among tightly packed multistory buildings—some so narrow that ambulances could not pass. Jabalia camp, viewed as a Hamas stronghold and site of the beginning of the second intifada, followed this pattern and has now been completely destroyed by the Israeli army.

Australia US State Visit: Hard Lessons in Soft Power

Kurniawan Arif Maspul

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When a visiting prime minister stands beside a US president to sign a multibillion-dollar security and minerals deal, the optics are meant to be scripted: handshake, reaffirmation, civility. What happened at the White House on 20 October was not that. Midway through a broadly significant meeting between President Donald Trump and Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Trump turned on the media handlers of the moment: he called an Australian reporter a ‘nasty guy,’ chided others, and snapped at Australia’s ambassador, Kevin Rudd, in a short, sharp burst of public theatre that broke the diplomatic script. The exchange was awkward enough to make the deals signed — important as they were — feel like an afterthought.

This was more than just a rude remark. It exemplified performance politics at its most transactional: an attempt to shift the dialogue, discredit an opponent, and divert attention from uncomfortable questions. That mix of sarcasm and personal attack is a common tactic in Trump’s rhetorical approach — not a rare anomaly but a recurring pattern of media discreditation evident since his previous presidency. It works by changing the focus from the question to the questioner, turning a democratic debate — genuine scrutiny of authority — into a spectacle of personalities. This pattern has eroded public trust in the media and undermined the norms that uphold democratic accountability.

Why does this matter for Australia? Because it was not just a casual domestic moment; it was a state visit. Leaders do not meet in isolated policy bubbles: their words and gestures carry international significance. For Canberra, the White House display posed a double challenge. It temporarily shifted attention away from meaningful cooperation on critical minerals and AUKUS-related deterrence, casting those achievements in the shadow of personal drama. Besides, it raised a question about reputation: how should a middle power safeguard its diplomats and journalists — and manage a relationship with a superpower whose leader uses performative contempt as foreign policy theatre? The solution cannot be to dismiss such incidents as simple domestic noise. They are a persistent feature of modern international signaling and, for a country like Australia, they are significant.

When viewed from an international relations lens, the exchange reveals how soft power and democratic credibility function as strategic levers. Respect for the free press is not a ceremonial nicety; it is a visible indicator of democratic standards that foster trust. When a big power’s leader openly mocks journalists and regards a visiting nation’s envoy as a personal enemy, institutional trust suffers. Other nations will wonder: Is this a responsible partner? Do public rituals convey substance or spectacle? In short, credibility, rather than capacity, is a strategic advantage.

Balancing Ethics and AI Innovation

J.P. SINGH

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Disregarding ethical considerations in the name of AI innovation – the direction taken by the US – is a recipe for disaster. But pretending that lofty ethical principles will solve the real governance challenges AI raises is similarly misguided.

WASHINGTON, DC – The biggest governance dilemma in AI is setting guidelines for the technology’s ethical use without unduly weakening the incentive to innovate. So far, countries and regions have largely failed to strike any kind of balance, instead tipping the scales one way or the other while loftily proclaiming reverence for both.

Financial Investors Can’t Profit From Complacency Forever

ŞEBNEM KALEMLI-ÖZCAN argues that bond-market participants and others are consciously choosing to ignore obvious policy risks.

The concept of responsible AI (RAI) exemplifies this idealistic rhetoric. The principles it espouses – from ensuring that algorithms are not based on faulty datasets to preventing privacy and human-rights violations – are undoubtedly worthy. Where RAI falls short is in showing how these ideals should be incorporated into AI governance, and how to balance regulation with incentives for continued innovation.

Nonetheless, RAI has been embraced by many governments, which have incorporated relevant language into national AI policies. International organizations have also championed RAI –UNESCO’s Global AI Ethics and Governance Observatory is a leading example – with the goal of shaping international norms and national policy. But such top-down approaches contrast sharply with the deliberative, bottom-up decision-making that has proven most effective in addressing problems requiring collective action and coordination.

Meanwhile, corporations are touting their supposed commitment to RAI, often while resisting the regulations that would force them to implement its principles. Even universities have jumped on the RAI bandwagon, offering AI ethics courses in computer science departments. AI governance courses, however, are usually offered in other departments, so computer science students may not take them.

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But it is the brass tacks of AI governance, not the promotion of vague principles, that will lead to politically feasible, ethically desirable, and economically beneficial outcomes. Policymakers in many economies are struggling on this front, especially when trying to balance ethical imperatives with incentives for innovation. Whereas South Korea and Japan seem to have found some equilibrium, the European Union has placed a higher priority on ethics, and the United Kingdom and the United States have put innovation first.

The EU’s 2024 AI Act attempts to take a balanced approach, classifying AI applications according to risk, with high-risk activities more heavily regulated and minimal-risk activities left unregulated. Its experience in enforcing AI ethics can offer useful lessons for the rest of the world, as it monitors the implementation of its regulations across member states. Nonetheless, as French President Emmanuel Macron rightly noted in February, the EU is currently “not in the race” when it comes to AI innovation. Today, the European Commission still struggles to articulate a pro-competitive innovation strategy.