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Netanyahu: no vote on Gaza ceasefire until Hamas accepts all terms-Thu 16 Jan 2025 21.58 CET 1
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Netanyahu: no vote on Gaza ceasefire until Hamas accepts all terms-Thu 16 Jan 2025 21.58 CET
Israeli PM’s demand ahead of expected cabinet meeting threatens to derail peace talks
Bethan McKernan in Jerusalem and Andrew Roth in Washington
Benjamin Netanyahu has said his cabinet will not meet to vote on a ceasefire deal aimed at halting the Gaza war until “Hamas accepts all elements of the agreement,” in a move that threatens to derail months of work to end the brutal 15-month conflict.
The unexpected delay has sparked fears that last-minute disagreements between Israel and Hamas or hard-line opposition could further jeopardize the deal, although senior US officials have insisted the hard-won ceasefire will go into effect on Sunday as planned.
In a briefing at the State Department, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he was “very confident” that the ceasefire would go ahead and that “implementation is expected to begin, as I said, on Sunday”.
The announcement Thursday morning by the Israeli prime minister’s office came ahead of a scheduled meeting of the security cabinet and the government as a whole, where ministers were expected to ratify the agreement reached in the Qatari capital Doha on Wednesday evening.
A vote is now expected Friday morning, Israeli media reported.
Netanyahu’s office said that “Hamas has reneged on parts of the agreement reached with mediators and Israel in an effort to obtain last-minute concessions,” adding that the situation had created a “last-minute crisis.”
Senior Hamas official Izzat el-Reshiq said via the group’s Telegram channel minutes after the Israeli announcement that Hamas was committed to the ceasefire. Israeli media reported Thursday evening, citing unnamed government sources, that the disagreement had been resolved.
Without specifying the dispute, Blinken confirmed that there had been a “knot in the talks” between the parties involved in the complex negotiations, which included Israel and Hamas, as well as mediators from the US, Qatar and Egypt.
“While we are talking, we are resolving this issue,” he said, adding that he had been on the phone all morning and had direct talks with US chief envoy Brett McGurk and the Qatari government.
John Kirby, a spokesman for the US National Security Council, said there are some “implementation details that have yet to be ironed out” but the US is “confident that we will be able to begin implementation on Sunday”.
Israel’s far-right security minister says he will quit government if ceasefire ratified – video
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu’s far-right national security minister, announced on Thursday evening that he will leave the government if it ratifies the Gaza ceasefire agreement .
Calling the hostage ceasefire agreement “irresponsible” and “reckless,” Ben-Gvir said accepting it would “erase the achievements of the war” by freeing Palestinian militants and ceding territory in Gaza.
But while the threat is a blow to Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir’s departure would not bring down the prime minister’s government.
In Gaza, fighting has continued despite expectations of a ceasefire, which is still believed to take effect on Sunday. The Civil Defense Agency said on Thursday that at least 77 people were killed and 230 wounded in Israeli air strikes that hit several areas in the Palestinian territory overnight.
The Israeli military said it had hit about 50 militant targets in the Gaza Strip in the past day, including weapons depots and rocket launching sites.
Netanyahu’s office did not initially specify which parts of the deal hit a roadblock, but said later Thursday that Hamas had challenged Israel’s authority to veto the release of a number of prisoners classified as mass murderers and considered “symbols of terror.”
Israel’s Radio Kan reported on Thursday that the issue was related to opposition to the deal by far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich. Smotrich had strongly criticized the previously proposed agreements with Hamas, although the deal was expected to be ratified by a large majority of the cabinet, even without the support of the finance minister or his hard-line colleague Ben-Gvir.
Netanyahu and his defense minister, Israel Katz, met with Smotrich on Wednesday after Ben-Gvir urged him to join forces and pull his parties out of the coalition – which could cause the fall of the government – if the deal was agreed.Israel strikes
Israel strikes Gaza refugee tents hours after ceasefire – video
According to an Israeli TV report, Smotrich presented Netanyahu with a list of conditions for his support, including a promise that Israel would return to the fighting if Hamas managed to retain control of Gaza and strictly limit the amount of humanitarian aid allowed into the territory.
On Thursday, Smotrich’s Religious Zionism Party said in a statement that its condition for remaining in the government would be to return to fighting at the end of the first phase of the agreement, to destroy Hamas and bring back all hostages.
The Israeli press reported widely this week that the government was prepared to resume hostilities after the end of the first six-week phase of the truce, during which the hostages are supposed to be released.
According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, Netanyahu’s chief of staff, Yossi Fuchs, said on Wednesday that the agreement “includes the option to resume fighting at the end of the first phase if negotiations on the second phase do not progress in a way that promises to fulfill the war’s objectives: the military and civilian annihilation of Hamas and the release of all hostages.”
The deal finalized in Doha by US, Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari negotiators after weeks of talks largely follows the contours of a ceasefire agreement first reached last May. President Joe Biden hailed the agreement as a fundamental achievement of his administration and called it the result of “persistent and painstaking American diplomacy”.
In the first phase, which will last 42 days, Hamas has agreed to release 33 hostages, including children, women – including female soldiers – and people over 50. In return, Israel will release 50 Palestinian prisoners for each Israeli female soldier freed by Hamas and 30 for other hostages.
Palestinians displaced from their homes would be able to move freely in the Gaza Strip, which Israel has divided into two halves with a military corridor. The wounded would be evacuated for treatment abroad, and aid to the territory would be increased to 600 truckloads a day – above the minimum of 500 that aid agencies say is needed to contain Gaza’s devastating humanitarian crisis.
In the second stage, the remaining hostages would be sent back and a corresponding number of Palestinian prisoners would be released, while Israel would withdraw completely from the territory. The details are subject to further negotiations, due to begin 16 days after the first phase.
The third phase would address the exchange of bodies of dead hostages and Hamas members and a reconstruction plan for Gaza would be launched. Arrangements for the future governance of the strip remain unclear. The Biden administration and much of the international community have advocated for the return to the strip of the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which lost control of the Gaza Strip to Hamas in a brief civil war in 2007. However, Israel has repeatedly rejected this suggestion.
More than 15 months of war have killed more than 46 000 Palestinians and destroyed most of Gaza’s infrastructure. The International Court of Justice is investigating claims that Israel committed genocide.
About 1,200 people in Israel were killed and another 250 were taken hostage in the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 that triggered the war. A hundred of the hostages were freed in exchange for 240 women and children held in Israeli jails following a November 2023 ceasefire deal that collapsed a week later.
The Gaza war has drawn in Iran, which is committed to Israel’s destruction, as well as Tehran’s allies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, destabilizing the region. It also led to political fallout and mass protests around the world over Western support for Israel.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announces that the security cabinet will meet on Friday amid concerns that the delay could delay the start of the ceasefire
Staff and agencies
Israel’s security cabinet will meet on Friday after negotiators reached an agreement to release hostages as part of the Gaza cease-fire with Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said.
In Gaza itself, Israeli warplanes continued intense strikes, and Palestinian authorities said late Thursday that at least 86 people had been killed in the day after the truce was announced. Earlier on Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had attacked about 50 terrorist targets across the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours.
Israel postponed expected meetings on Thursday, when the cabinet was due to vote on the pact, with long-standing divisions evident among ministers. Netanyahu said his cabinet would not meet until “Hamas accepts all elements of the agreement,” in a move that threatened to derail months of work to end the brutal 15-month conflict.
The unexpected delay sparked fears that last-minute disagreements between Israel and Hamas or hardline opposition could still sabotage the deal. But in the early hours of Friday, Netanyahu’s office suggested approval was imminent. “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been informed by the negotiating team that an agreement has been reached on the release of the hostages,” his office said in a statement.
The security cabinet will meet on Friday before a later government meeting to approve the deal, it said.
It was not immediately clear whether the later meeting would take place on Friday or Saturday, or whether there would be any postponement of the start of the cease-fire on Sunday.
Israel’s acceptance of the agreement will not be official until it is approved by the security cabinet and the government. The prime minister’s office has not commented on the timetable. Some political analysts have speculated that the start of the cease-fire, scheduled for Sunday, could be delayed if Israel does not finalize approval by Saturday.
White House spokesman John Kirby said Washington believes the agreement is on track and that it expects the cease-fire in the 15-month-old conflict to take place “later this weekend.” “We don’t see anything that tells us this is going to derail at this point,” he said Thursday on CNN.
The families of the Israeli hostages have been informed and preparations have been ordered to receive the hostages upon their return to Israel, Friday’s statement added.
A group representing the families of Israeli hostages in Gaza, 33 of whom are due to be released in the first six-week phase of the deal, previously urged Netanyahu to move quickly. “For the 98 hostages, every night is another night of terrible nightmare. Do not postpone their return for even one more night,” the group said in a statement released late Thursday by Israeli media.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday that a “free end” to negotiations had to be resolved. A US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said it was a dispute over the identity of prisoners Hamas wanted to release. Envoys of President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump were in Doha, along with Egyptian and Qatari mediators, to resolve the issue, the official said.
Senior Hamas official Izzat el-Reshiq said the group remains committed to the cease-fire agreement.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu’s hardline national security minister, announced Thursday night that he would quit the government if it ratified the Gaza ceasefire agreement. Calling the hostage ceasefire agreement “irresponsible” and “reckless,” Ben-Gvir said accepting it would “erase the achievements of the war” by freeing Palestinian militants and ceding territory in Gaza.
But while the threat is a blow to Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir’s departure would not bring down the prime minister’s government.
In Jerusalem, some Israelis marched through the streets carrying fake coffins in protest at the ceasefire, blocking roads and clashing with police. Other protesters blocked traffic until security forces dispersed them.
The deal finalized in Doha by US, Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari negotiators after weeks of talks largely follows the contours of a ceasefire agreement first agreed last May. President Joe Biden hailed the agreement as a fundamental achievement of his administration and called it the result of “persistent and painstaking American diplomacy”.
In the first phase, which will last 42 days, Hamas has agreed to release 33 hostages, including children, women – including female soldiers – and people over 50. In return, Israel will release 50 Palestinian prisoners for each Israeli female soldier freed by Hamas and 30 for other hostages.
Palestinians displaced from their homes would be able to move freely in the Gaza Strip, which Israel has divided in two halves with a military corridor. The wounded would be evacuated for treatment abroad, and aid to the territory would be increased to 600 truckloads a day – above the minimum of 500 that aid agencies say is needed to contain Gaza’s devastating humanitarian crisis.
In the second stage, the remaining hostages would be sent back and a corresponding number of Palestinian prisoners would be released, while Israel would withdraw completely from the territory. The details are subject to further negotiations, due to begin 16 days after the first phase.
The third phase would address the exchange of bodies of dead hostages and Hamas members and a reconstruction plan for Gaza would be launched. Arrangements for the future governance of the strip remain unclear. The Biden administration and much of the international community have advocated for the return to the strip of the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which lost control of the Gaza Strip to Hamas in a brief civil war in 2007. However, Israel has repeatedly rejected this suggestion.
More than 15 months of war have killed more than 46 000 Palestinians and destroyed most of Gaza’s infrastructure. The International Court of Justice is considering Israel’s charges of genocide.
With Reuters
,,,, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/17/israel-hamas-ceasefire-deal-gaza-war-netanyahu-updates
Exclusive: Most of those polled by YouGov have a negative view of the billionaire – except Reform UK and AfD voters
The majority of people in the UK and Germany find Elon Musk’s efforts to influence their national politics unacceptable and believe the US tech mogul does not know much about these countries or the problems they face, a poll shows.
The poll, conducted by YouGov, comes after a series of hostile statements by the billionaire owner of Tesla, SpaceX and social media platform X, who has attacked British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and their respective governments.
The poll, conducted on a sample of more than 2,200 people in each country, also found that majorities of 54% in both countries thought it was “not important” for their governments to cultivate a good relationship with Musk, and about 50% thought it was better to ignore him.
The poll found that only 13% of respondents in both countries thought Musk’s interventions in their politics were acceptable, with 68% in the UK and 73% in Germany saying the opposite. The majority also found his meddling in US politics unacceptable.
Asked how well the billionaire understands their countries’ politics and the problems they face, people were equally critical: only about a fifth in each country said he knew “very much” or “quite a lot”, and 63% “not very much” or “not at all”.
In Germany, Musk sparked fury weeks before the federal election with a remark on X claiming that only the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party could “save Germany”, followed by an editorial saying it was “clearly false” to name the extremist party.
He also called Scholz, a Social Democrat, “an incompetent fool” and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier an “undemocratic tyrant”. Last week, he praised AfD leader Alice Weidel in an X live stream.
Musk has described the UK as a “tyrannical police state”, called Starmer a “two-faced Keir ” over allegations of judicial discrimination against far-right rioters, and described new rules on the agricultural inheritance tax as “total Stalin ” in the UK.
He said King Charles should dissolve parliament and that the Labor prime minister should be jailed for his alleged role in a grooming gang scandal, calling Starmer “utterly despicable ” and “deeply complicit in mass rape for votes”.
The poll showed that Landlord X – a close ally of Donald Trump who, after spending $250m (£210m) to help him get re-elected, was tasked by the incoming US president to help cut the federal budget – was deeply unpopular in the UK and Germany.
The only exceptions were among AfD voters, which Musk has described as “the only spark of hope” in Germany, and Reform UK, the anti-immigration party led by Nigel Farage, to which Musk reportedly intended to donate $100 million.
Musk has been particularly popular among these voters, with 70% of AfD voters saying they have a favorable opinion of the billionaire, compared with less than 20% of supporters of Germany’s other main parties.
Reform UK voters were less enthusiastic, presumably because Musk said this month that Farage “doesn’t have what it takes” and should be replaced as party leader, apparently over a disagreement over jailed far-right agitator Tommy Robinson.
However, Musk’s 47% favorability rating among reform supporters was still significantly higher than the 26% among Conservative voters and just 4%-5% among Labour and Liberal Democrat voters.
Reform and AfD voters were also significantly more likely to say that Musk’s political interference is acceptable and that he should be cultivated – although only 18% of Reform voters and 19% of AfD voters thought Musk was influential in the UK or Germany.
Overall, over 70% of respondents in both countries said they had a negative opinion of the combative billionaire. However, few thought his interventions would make a difference: barely a fifth thought he has a big influence on national politics.
Asked how they thought Musk had handled X, the former Twitter, which he bought for $44 billion in 2022, just 16% of Brits and 19% of Germans said he had done so properly. Just 14%-15% said they now had a favorable opinion of the platform.
,,,,, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/17/elon-musk-uk-germany-favourability-yougov-poll
People in maga hats at last week’s meal didn’t know Donald Trump’s son and were invited in off the street, says hotel manager
Miranda Bryant in Nuuk
A group of Greenlanders who attended a lunch hosted by Donald Trump Jr, wearing “Make America Great Again” hats, were not devoted supporters of the US president-elect but street people attracted by the prospect of free food, it has been claimed.
Trump Jr visited Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, last week, shortly after his father said it was “absolutely necessary” for the US to take control of the semi-autonomous Danish territory.
During his visit, Trump Jr went to the Hans Egede Hotel for lunch with a group of people wearing Maga hats and put his father on speaker. The president-elect told them, “We will treat you well.”
But Jørgen Bay-Kastrup, the hotel’s executive director, said many of his guests were not Trump supporters, but people his team met on the street who only later learned who Trump Jr. was.
Describing many of the members of the group as homeless, he said Trump Jr. “met them on the street and invited them to lunch, or his staff invited them. But I don’t think they knew who he was inviting.”
Jørgen Bay-Kastrup, general manager of Hotel Hans Egede. Photo: Juliette Pavy/The Guardian
“Of course, this was a bit strange for us, because we saw guests that we have never seen in our hotel before – and will probably never see again, because it is out of their economic possibilities.”
The group of about 15 ate a traditional Greenlandic lunch, including fish and caribou. Bay-Kastrup added that they were not Trump supporters. “They were just, ‘hey, someone invited us to lunch, let’s go and join him.’ I think they found out later who it was.”
A spokesman for Trump Jr denied the claims, describing them as “beyond ridiculous”.
People outside the Hans Egede Hotel last week when Trump Jr visited Nuuk. Photo: Daniel L Johnsen/EPA
Trump Jr’s visit came as his father refused to rule out using military or economic action to acquire the world’s largest island.
Republicans in the House of Representatives have released a bill called the Make Greenland Great Again Act, which would allow the Trump administration, which takes office on Monday, to hold talks to try to buy the territory.
Greenland and Denmark have said repeatedly that the island, whose foreign and security policy and security are controlled by NATO member Denmark, is not for sale. However, the Greenlandic prime minister said his government is interested in deepening cooperation with the US and has “open doors on mining”.
Asked about Trump’s interest in Greenland, Bay-Kastrup, who is Danish, said, “We are not a trade, we are not something for sale. We would like to cooperate, but we are not for sale.”
Since Trump Jr.’s visit, people dressed in maga hats and American flags have reportedly been handing out $100 bills and filming outside the supermarket across the street.
One man, Jacob Nordstrøm, was quoted in Greenland’s Sermitsiaq newspaper as saying that his 11-year-old son came home with a $100 bill. He told the newspaper, which described the people who handed out the money as Canadian-American influencers, “It’s downright shocking to learn that my 11-year-old son received money from an adult he doesn’t know.”
Bay-Kastrup, who witnessed the scenes from his office, said that most people probably found the stunt amusing, but that he did see one person pick up a Maga hat and step on it.
In response to The Guardian’s request for comment on Trump Jr’s lunch invitations, Arthur Schwartz, a political operative and friend of the president-elect’s son, said: ‘Do you think Donald Trump Jr was walking around Greenland inviting homeless people … to lunch, or do you realize that the suggestion sounds so beyond ridiculous that you should feel bad even asking the question?
“There were cameras following him from the second he got there to the second he left. Did they miss him recruiting homeless people … at his lunch … with homeless people?”
The British-Danish platform uses air-to-air missiles, but fired from the ground; another Russian fuel depot burns. What we know on day 1,059
Warren Murray and the agencies
Ukrainian air defense is tracking Russian drones using an existing machine-gun based system. The future Gravehawk system launches air-to-air missiles from the ground. Photo: Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters
Ukraine is set to receive a new, rapidly-developed, custom-built air defense system called the Gravehawk as part of the support announced by Keir Starmer during his visit to Kiev on Thursday. The system, which is about the size of a shipping container, has been developed by Britain and Denmark to allow the Ukrainians to shoot down aerial threats using modernized ground-launched air-to-air missiles – meaning, according to the British government, it can “use Ukrainian missiles already in the possession of their armed forces” to shoot down Russian missiles and drones. The British government revealed that two Gravehawk prototypes were tested in Ukraine in September, with 15 due to be deployed this year.
The Ukrainian military said on Thursday that it had struck a large Russian military fuel depot in Liskinska, in Russia’s Voronezh region, with a drone strike, sparking a “large-scale fire”. The governor of Voronezh region, Alexander Gusev, confirmed that several drones “caused a fire at an oil depot”. Videos posted by witnesses showed a large fire.
A major Russian gunpowder factory in the Tambov region was attacked, a Ukrainian official said on Thursday, without directly claiming Ukrainian responsibility or specifying the consequences of the attack. “The enterprise is one of the main suppliers of explosive materials to the Russian Federation army,” said Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Ukrainian center for countering disinformation.
France and Norway will honor their commitments to deliver fighter jets to Ukraine, the defense ministers of the two countries said in Oslo on Thursday. Norway has promised Ukraine six U.S.-produced F-16 jets, with deliveries staggered in 2024 and 2025, while France said it would supply an unspecified number of Mirage 2000-5 fighters in the first quarter of 2025.
A Ukrainian brigade has used ground drones equipped with machine guns and mines to carry out what it claims is the first documented machine-gun-only ground assault in the war with Russia. The Khartiya Brigade said aerial drone-guided assault, mine and demining vehicles were used in last month’s attack in the northeastern Kharkiv region. The operation paved the way for a successful infantry advance, the brigade said. “They get as close as possible to their [Russian] dugouts and then explode,” a Ukrainian crew member explained to Reuters news agency.
Ukraine said on Thursday it had sentenced a former local official to 15 years behind bars for high treason for aiding Russian forces. Local media identified him as Oleksandr Kurpil, a deputy from the city of Trostianets in the Sumy region, and said he was detained in May 2022.
The Russian human rights ombudsman said Thursday that he had discussed with his Ukrainian counterpart the search for missing residents of Russia’s Kursk border region after Ukrainian troops seized the territory last August. Ukraine said about 2,000 civilians remained in the territory it controls, while Russia put the number of missing people at less than 1,000. Tatyana Moskalkova, the Russian ombudsman, called the talks “an important step towards building trust and taking concrete joint action”. Ukraine’s human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets confirmed that they had “agreed to continue mutual exchange of information on the search for missing persons among prisoners of war”.
Ukraine’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth is expected to slow to 2.7% this year from probably around 3.6% in 2024, Deputy Economy Minister Andrii Teliupa said on Thursday. The forecast is below the 3-4% level expected by most Ukrainian analysts and economists. Ukrainian businesses are suffering from staff shortages as tens of thousands of Ukrainians have been mobilized into the army and millions of refugees remain abroad. Ukraine is also facing an energy crisis as Russia bombs the sector.
A compensation scheme was opened on Thursday for Ukrainians who lost close relatives during Russia’s invasion. Thousands of claims have already been received. The Ukraine compensation register is based in The Hague and is designed to act as a record of all eligible claims for compensation for damage, loss and injury caused by the large-scale Russian invasion. Set up by the Council of Europe and joined by the EU, the register will eventually establish a financial total to seek compensation from Moscow.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian are due to meet in Russia on Friday and sign a strategic cooperation agreement. The Russian state news agency Tass quoted Iran’s ambassador to Moscow, Kazem Jalali, as saying that the cooperation agreement will not include a mutual defense clause, like Moscow’s pacts with North Korea and Belarus. Ukraine said in 2024 that Russia has launched more than 8,000 Shahed drones developed by Iran since the invasion. Kiev first accused Iran of supplying drones to Russia in the fall of 2022.
The measures come a week after Washington also sanctioned Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s rival Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo
Abdel Fattah al-Burhan arrives at Beijing Capital International Airport ahead of a summit in September 2024. Photo: Florence Lo/Reuters
Reuters in Washington
The United States has imposed sanctions on Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, accusing him of choosing war over negotiations to end a conflict that has killed tens of thousands and driven millions from their homes.
The US Treasury Department said in a statement that under Burhan’s leadership, the military’s war tactics included indiscriminate bombing of civilian infrastructure, attacks on schools, markets and hospitals, and extrajudicial killings.
Washington announced the measures a week after imposing sanctions on Burhan’s rival in the two-year civil war, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The sources said one of the aims of Thursday’s sanctions was to show that Washington is not choosing sides.
Speaking earlier Thursday, Burhan was defiant about the prospect that he could be targeted.
“We have heard that there will be sanctions against the military leadership. We welcome any sanctions because we have served this country,” he said in comments broadcast by Al Jazeera television.
Washington also issued sanctions over arms supplies to the military, targeting a Sudanese-Ukrainian national as well as a Hong Kong-based company.
Thursday’s action freezes all their US assets and generally bars Americans from doing business with them. The Treasury Department said it has issued authorizations allowing certain transactions, including activities involving the belligerent generals, so as not to impede humanitarian assistance.
The Sudanese army and the RSF jointly led a coup in 2021, ousting Sudan’s civilian leadership, but broke peace less than two years later over plans to integrate their forces.
The war that broke out in April 2023 plunged half the population into famine.
Daghestan, known as Hemedti, was sanctioned after Washington determined that its forces had committed genocide, as well as for attacks on civilians. The RSF has engaged in bloody looting campaigns in territory it controls.
In a statement, Sudan’s foreign ministry said the latest US measure “expresses nothing but confusion and a poor sense of justice” and accused Washington of defending the genocide committed by the RSF.
The US and Saudi Arabia have repeatedly tried to bring both sides to the negotiating table, with the military refusing most attempts, including talks in Geneva in August, which were aimed in part at facilitating humanitarian access.
Instead, the army has stepped up its military campaign, capturing the strategic town of Wad Madani this week and vowing to retake the capital, Khartoum.
Human rights experts and residents have accused the army of indiscriminate air strikes as well as attacks on civilians, most recently the revenge attacks in Wad Madani this week. The US has previously established that the army and RSF committed war crimes.
In his last press conference before the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump on January 20, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday that it is a “real regret” that Washington has failed to end the fighting under his leadership.
While there have been some improvements in getting humanitarian assistance to Sudan through US diplomacy, they have not seen an end to the conflict, “not an end to the abuses, not an end to the suffering of the people,” Blinken said. “We will continue to work here over the next three days and I hope the next administration will address that as well.”
,,, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/16/sanction-sudan-army-chief-burhan
Donald Trump would consider postponing TikTok-Thu ban 16 Jan 2025 18.59 CET
President-elect ‘has a hot spot’ for the platform and wants a political solution to ‘keep the app but protect the data
Sophia Smith Galer: TikTok is the only truly democratic social platform
Dan Milmo Global technology editor
Donald Trump is considering suspending a TikTok ban in the US through an executive order when he enters the White House on January 20, according to a report.
The president-elect is considering an executive order that would delay enforcement of a sale-or-ban law that would take effect on January 19, the Washington Post said. The report added, however, that Trump’s legal grounds for suspending a law passed by Congress are questionable.
Under the terms of the law, the US operations of the short-vide video app must be sold by Chinese owners by Sunday. If the sale doesn’t happen, new users won’t be able to download TikTok from app stores.
However, TikTok is preparing to completely shut down the app for US users on Sunday unless the Supreme Court steps in to block the law, according to tech news website The Information.
Citing unnamed sources familiar with the deliberations, the Washington Post reported Wednesday that Trump and his team are considering an executive order that would suspend enforcement of the law for 60 to 90 days. The Supreme Court is also yet to rule on whether the law should be allowed to continue, though a hearing last week indicated it was unlikely to stand in the legislation’s way.
Trump said last month that “I have a warm place in my heart for TikTok” and asked the high court to pause implementation of the law so he can pursue a “political resolution” once in office. Congress voted to ban the app, which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, because of fears that the Chinese state could access data from its 170 million US users.
“TikTok itself is a fantastic platform,” Mike Waltz, Trump’s incoming national security adviser, told Fox News on Wednesday. “We will find a way to keep it, but protect people’s data.”
Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, said Trump may try to extend the deadline for TikTok to finalize a deal.
“Once Trump becomes president, he could attempt to thwart a ban by seeking an extension of time to complete a ‘transaction’ that would allow TikTok to operate in the US by implementing a qualified divestiture,” he said.
The New York Times also reported that TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew was invited to Trump’s inauguration and will sit in a “position of honor”.
US TV station NBC reported that the Biden administration was weighing options to keep the social media platform open beyond Sunday in a bid to delay Trump’s decision.
“Americans should not expect to see TikTok suddenly banned on Sunday,” an administration official told NBC.
Shares of rival social media site Snap fell nearly 4% in Thursday trading as traders anticipated a potential delay for TikTok in the US.
,,,, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/16/tiktok-ban-donald-trump-weighing-up-delay
Olivier Grondeau was arrested in 2022 and accused Iran of using him for ‘political blackmail’ against France
The mother of a French traveler detained in Iran for two years has said authorities “know he is innocent” but continue to hold him in the country’s notorious Evin prison.
Olivier Grondeau, 33, was arrested from his hotel room in Shiraz in southern Iran on October 12, 2022, just weeks after the anti-government “Women, Life, Freedom ” protests swept the country. The writer, poet and bookseller is in the country as part of a world tour.
For two years, he asked his family to keep his case secret so as not to hamper diplomatic efforts. After those efforts failed, he decided this month to go public, allowing his family to release an audio recording in which he accuses Iran of using him for “political blackmail” against France.
In an interview with The Guardian, his mother, Thérèse Grondeau, said, “For weeks after his arrest, I had no idea whether my son was dead or alive or whether he was in a hospital. It was the darkest moment.”
He was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of “collecting information with a view to handing it over to the opposing intelligence service”. He has categorically denied the charges and maintains his innocence.
Grondeau’s friends and family followed his decision to remain anonymous, while the French authorities continued their diplomatic efforts, which continue to this day, says Thérèse.
“For several weeks before revealing his identity, he had reached exhaustion, and now that his name has appeared in the media, it has helped his morale a lot. Besides, he is a very private person,” she said.
In the audio message, which was broadcast on French radio, Grondeau addressed the French authorities and said that his strength was “running out”, as were that of fellow French detainees, teacher Cécile Kohler and her partner Jacques Paris. They were arrested in May 2022 and accused of sparking labor protests during their trip to Iran, charges their families vehemently denied.
“Your responsibility is called to ensure the survival of three human beings,” Grondeau said.
In one of the dictated letters sent home and published in Le Monde, he said he had been “kidnapped” by four men waiting outside his hotel in the city of Shiraz and taken to a windowless room. Among the foreign nationals arrested at the same time was 24-year-old Spanish tourist Ana Baneira, who was released in February 2023 after four months in detention. Olivier’s friends revealed that he bonded with Baneira during the trip.
He spent the first day blindfolded and handcuffed. His family was warned 10 days later that his phone was inaccessible. After his initial arrest by police in Shiraz, he was sent to Evin custody in Tehran. His family received their first “sign of life” on November 16, 2022, a month after his arrest. He was able to make his first phone call to his family 72 days after his arrest and only after he was transferred again from Evin to Shiraz.
Speaking about his conditions of detention, his friend Tristan Bultiauw said: “I only found out later about the horrific conditions of detention during his initial detention by the police. He was in an extremely overcrowded cell sleeping on the floor.”
Olivier has since been moved back to Evin prison, where high-profile international detainees have been held in the past. Olivier “does not talk about the true conditions of his detention at Evin and tries to reassure his family and friends, even though he is suffering a lot,” Bultiauw added.
His mother revealed that the calls she makes to family at Evin are always monitored by a guard. “It was easier to make calls when he was in Shiraz, but in Evin we have no idea when and at what time he will call. It is always monitored.”
When asked if she had a message for the Islamic Republic authorities, she said, “I have nothing to tell them, except that I know he is innocent and that his file is empty.”
The revelation of Olivier’s identity came days after the release of Italian journalist Cecilia Sala this month. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s office said her swift release was the result of “intense work through diplomatic and intelligence channels”.
Thérèse said, “There have been huge diplomatic efforts and every country approaches issues differently, so we cannot make comparisons. It has not affected me and I am very happy for Cecilia and I hope the others will be free soon.”
Olivier’s family say they have managed to send him books and he is allowed consular visits every two or three months. Thérèse says she spends her time researching, organizing things for Olivier and collecting the books he requests.
His mother and friends also said that despite two years and three months in the cell, he continues to send birthday wishes to his friends and remembers all their birthdays.
“He is a glutton. He asks his mom to bake a cake for each of us,” Bultiauw said. “He is truly a very special friend to all of us.”
If Trump’s activity is aimed at bending existing alliances to the advantage of the US, Europe should take charge. If he truly intends to undermine national sovereignty, a hard line will be necessary.
The audacity with which President Donald Trump is remaking the rules of American diplomacy has been dizzying. His threat to impose tariffs against America’s friends comes at a bad time. Growth has stagnated in many G7 countries, states are struggling to cope with inflation, and tariffs will hurt trade-dependent sectors.
Trump’s geopolitical gambits are decidedly worse. Countries that depend on US security assistance, such as Ukraine and Taiwan, already feared abandonment. Now Greenland and Canada have been informed they are on the list for US territorial acquisitions. National leaders in Mexico, Canada and Europe are scrambling to find an appropriate response.
The tariff response
Courting the president is an option and is being tried. Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, has advised international leaders to “call him out. Meet with him. Talk to him about anything. And if all else fails, learn to play golf.”
But that’s not a sure bet to gain an advantage with Trump, and Democratic leaders who are weak at home could pay a big price. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau flew to Mar-a-Lago in late November to appeal directly to Trump’s better angels over the tariff threat.
He did so over the objections of his deputy, Chrystia Freeland, who argued for a tougher response and resigned in protest shortly afterward. This was the final blow for Trudeau’s weak administration and led directly to the prime minister’s resignation this month.
A public show of force and quiet compliance may prove to be the right strategy. No one knows yet.
Mexico’s leader, Claudia Sheinbaum, has taken a tougher stance, threatening retaliatory tariffs. Behind the scenes, Sheinbaum is stepping up and has announced several major fentanyl seizures. A public show of force and quiet compliance may prove to be the right strategy. No one knows yet.
China seems more confident in its response. It has adopted a strategy of pre-emptive retaliation, extending tariffs on certain US imports and sanctions on US firms. Unlike his counterparts in Europe and Canada, President Xi Jinping does not fear a backlash at home. Evan Medeiros, a former national security official in the Obama administration, says China’s strategy is one of retaliation, adaptation and diversification.
Meanwhile, Europe is divided. At a Trilateral Forum meeting in Madrid, former US-EU ambassador Anthony Gardner, who served in the Obama administration, encouraged Europeans to plan to hit US imports with retaliatory tariffs.
Others are advocating attractive deals for the new administration, promising to buy American weapons and liquefied natural gas.
Trump’s threats may also have a dampening effect on regulation of US firms. Reports suggest the EU may drop its investigations into US tech giants. Europe should take note of Mexico’s integrated approach as it plans its next step. And it should work hard to be united.
For Europe’s US allies, however, a tough response could come at a high geopolitical price. Stephen Miran, the incoming chairman of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, has claimed that the US is threatening to withdraw defense and security assistance if US allies retaliate with tariffs of their own. At a time of major war on the continent, the stakes for Europe in calibrating its response correctly are higher than in any other region of the world.
Geopolitical gambits
Trump’s geopolitical gambits create worries of a different magnitude. His promise to reach a deal on Ukraine raises at least three questions for Europe:
What are Trump’s red lines (if any) regarding Putin and Ukraine? If Trump abandons Ukraine, will it end there or will he also abandon the US security commitment to Europe? And if the US is willing to compromise or even abandon Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty, does that mean it would do the same with regard to other (small) states in other parts of the world?
Trump’s recent talk of acquiring Greenland and annexing Canada threatens to make sovereignty encroachment an open-ended proposition, heightening fears that his open disregard for sovereignty could lead to a fundamental reordering of international norms.
This would entail serious risks for the US: if normative and legal restraints on sovereignty are weakened, this puts more pressure on deterrence (and also on the credibility of deterrence) to block other major powers from using coercion or direct military force to alter borders – a serious issue in any conflict with China, particularly over Taiwan.
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And for Taiwan there is existential uncertainty. Is President Trump looking for a grand bargain with Beijing that includes trading the island’s sovereignty for something closer to home? Or is he simply returning US policy to its previous stance, one of (genuine) strategic ambiguity about what the US would do in the event of a confrontation between China and Taiwan?
Trump’s intentions
The challenge for leaders is how to decipher Trump’s intentions. It could be that Trump fundamentally plans to maintain America’s current position in international relations and simply use unconventional tactics to gain better access to stronger and more balanced markets and alliances. In this case, appeasement, diplomacy, visits, gifts, and steps to accommodate his demands may be a smart response.
But if Trump has real designs on Canada and Greenland, and intends to abandon Taiwan and Ukraine as part of a grand plan for a new international order, then US partners and allies should adopt a more strategic, but also tougher and longer-term response.
The question of US engagement… has been lurking in the shadows for decades
This means investing greater resources in defense. It also means finding alternatives to US power and partnership. For Europe, this calculus is becoming increasingly important, especially on the China question. Deepening ties with Beijing could be a pragmatic response to a US that is serious about abandonment and revisionism. It is risky if Trump just wants Europe aligned with US power.
Trump’s presidency brings new attention to US engagement. But it has been hidden in the shadows for more than decades.
In 1984, Josef Joffe, a research fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, published a now-famous article titled The American Suzette of Europe, drawing attention to the externalization of security by European countries to the US. A little over a decade later, John Mearsheimer wrote The Future of the American Suzete, arguing that power structures in Europe were “not sustainable” and that the most likely scenario in Europe was “an eventual American exit”.
If the Trump administration announces a new international order, then meeting the challenge will require more than hurried visits to Mar-a-Lago or the White House. It will require cool heads, preparation for the worst, and a clear understanding of what motivates the president. Leaders will also have to balance pressures at home.
But even at the best of times, understanding the intentions of others is beset by challenges. Before Trump arrived in the White House, he showed that he remains unpredictable and willing to test the limits of US alliances in totally unexpected ways. This makes understanding his intentions both urgent for world leaders and incredibly difficult.
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Realistic Recommendations for Trump II – Defense Priorities
What is the most important and realistic policy the new administration should adopt to advance US national interests?
Defense Priorities organized this symposium to stimulate thinking on what policies the incoming administration should adopt. Leading experts shared their views in an effort to inform and improve U.S. policy. Each contributor offered an answer to the same question, “What is the most important and realistic policy that the new administration should adopt to advance US national interests?”
Emma Ashford – Senior Fellow, Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy Program – Stimson Center
Rebalancing the defense relationship between the US and Europe
The incoming Trump administration is in a unique position to shift a significant share of the fiscal and manpower costs of defense to capable U.S. allies in Europe.
The United States has historically borne the lion’s share of military spending and delivery of military capabilities within the NATO alliance. Ironically, this imbalance between the U.S. and Europe has worsened in the post-Cold War period, as many European states have cut defense spending to the point where they could not even defend themselves.
Despite this, for years, it was largely inconceivable that any US leader would retreat from engagement with Europe. Even the Obama administration’s mild criticism of insufficient European defense spending has been seen as beyond the pale since 2011.
But with the rise of China, growing public concern about the cost of the war in Ukraine, and US defense stockpiles stretched, it is increasingly clear that this is no time for the US to tolerate allied free-riding.
Nor are the long-standing arguments that Europe cannot provide for its own defense plausible. America’s European allies are wealthy and technologically advanced, and while an immediate US withdrawal from the continent would leave gaps that would be impossible to fill, a more gradual shift of the burden to European states would push them to make the difficult budgetary and organizational choices necessary to make European defense more viable. A gradual withdrawal from European security – starting with Ukrainian spending and moving to NATO troop commitments – is eminently feasible.
Donald Trump himself is in a strong position to make this change happen. While withdrawing from NATO might require congressional action, simple changes in troop deployments or pressure on allies to spend more are within the president’s existing authorities. Trump has clearly run on an “America First” foreign policy, repeatedly emphasizing US costs in Ukraine and Europe. In terms of rhetoric and personality, the incoming president is thus in a unique position to negotiate with European leaders from a position of strength; he has outlasted nearly every European leader in his previous term and was re-elected with a popular mandate.
Just as only Nixon could go to China, it may be that only Donald Trump can rebalance the defense relationship between the US and Europe. The new administration should make that a top priority.
Benjamin Friedman – Policy Director – Defense Priorities
Make America’s allies sweat
Donald Trump is making US allies nervous, and this is potentially a good thing. Trump is likely to sow doubts among allies about the strength of US military commitments and reduce the number of forces deployed in their defense. By letting his allies sweat, Trump will encourage them to shoulder more of the burden of balancing threats, reduce the costs and risks borne by Americans, and increase US leverage with allies.
The last time he was president, Trump was rhetorically tough on allies, particularly in Europe, but proved more bark than bite. While he criticized America’s NATO allies for underspending on defense, he assured them that the United States is committed to defending them in accordance with Article 5 of the NATO treaty.
In his last year in office, Trump announced plans to move some US forces out of Germany, but never succeeded. His respect for Russia has not led him to prevent NATO expansion into Montenegro. Trump has strengthened informal US commitments to Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. His administration has taken a hard line on China and left US alliances essentially as he found them in Asia.
This time, Trump should take a different approach. He should use the uncertainty created by his well-known ambivalence toward allies, not soften it in the name of reassurance. This should not mean renouncing all alliances, but rather simply asserting that nothing, including Article 5, obligates the United States to go to war for its allies. Moreover, Trump should begin a process of reducing American garrisons in allied states, expecting them to shoulder more of the burden of their defense.
This will horrify most of Washington’s foreign policy establishment and probably even some of Trump’s advisers. They fetishize alliances, believing that the United States must always strive to assure its more than 50 allies and even quasi-allies of its total commitment to defend them, lest they be conquered by China, Russia or Iran, or simply cave in and do their bidding.
This establishment vision is wrong and corrosive to American interests. First, it ignores the balance of power. Russia’s weak military performance in Ukraine underscores its limited threat to Europe and the ability of European states to contain it. Geographicalobstacles and wealthy rivals contain any Chinese ambitions toward regional hegemony. No state, certainly not Iran, is ready to assert its dominance in the Middle East.
Second, US allies, if seriously threatened, will balance rather than train. They have plenty of capacity to balance those threats. But allies have little incentive to do so as long as US rhetoric and deployments say not to worry.
Third, by treating alliance commitments as untouchable, Washington undermines its ability to force its allies to make concessions in other areas, such as trade. Without the fear that US protection can be at least partially withdrawn, allies are unlikely to make concessions to keep it. Removing pledges – and even troops – will immediately increase US leverage over allies.
US interests demand that allies get fewer assurances, not more.
Lyle Goldstein – Director, Asia Program – Defense Priorities
P5 positioning as the new cornerstone of global diplomacy
In the alphabet soup of international organizations, there is always a big conference. Whether it’s a NATO summit, COP, a BRICS meeting or a G20 meeting, these groupings never seem to have the right players around the table to do serious work.
This is a natural consequence of woke theorizing and political correctness that prioritizes virtue signaling and equality. Under the Trump administration, the United States should shift the emphasis to pragmatic diplomatic outcomes that would much better serve the countries of the world.
Such a shift would have as its cornerstone a P5 summit. The P5 refers to the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China, Russia and the United Kingdom. These five countries were the victorious Allied Powers that won the Second World War. Some might regard this elevation as archaic, but these countries are still the world’s most important military powers. And military power still matters a lot in world affairs, as recent years have amply demonstrated.
Since realists regard power, especially military power, as the main determining factor in many, if not most, global political developments, it is only fitting that the P5 leaders meet frequently.
The P5 summit would also be guided by restraint, as these powers represent a diverse group, with a substantial and obvious rift between Western countries and the two Asian powers. Indeed, helping to bridge the gulf between East and West would be a difficult task, but one made easier by the frequent meetings of leaders.
Leadership summits present a tremendous opportunity to make progress and break down bureaucratic resistance to compromise. One need only consider the example of the 1986 Reykjavik summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev to consider how such meetings can dampen the dynamics of rivalry and develop new, unexpected and positive trajectories for world politics. The extraordinary talks that took place in Reykjavik laid the groundwork for ending the Cold War.
Unfortunately, today, most global summits serve only to consolidate the various groupings within the two major blocs, deepening the ‘new cold war’ which has had countless adverse effects, including fueling regional wars and the arms race. True, Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping have met several times in recent years, most recently in San Francisco. But these have amounted to brief “side talks” in larger multilateral fora.
Such key bilateral meetings should continue and be given extra time and effort. But a multilateral P5 would help more substantially to stabilize our troubled world. The P5 would have the best possible chance of setting the parameters for ending the catastrophic war in Ukraine. The group would also provide an ideal forum to explore future nuclear arms control possibilities. Trump should make this a priority.
Kelly Grieco – Senior Fellow, Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy Program – Stimson Center
Say “no” to European defense spending targets, say “yes” to withdrawing U.S. forces
The Trump administration should advance a detailed plan with clear benchmarks and a timetable for transferring primary responsibility for Europe’s security and defense from the United States to the Europeans themselves.
President-elect Donald Trump has long criticized America’s NATO allies for not spending more on their own defense and letting Americans foot the bill. In his first interview since his re-election, Trump warned that if European allies don’t “pay their bills,” he would “absolutely” consider withdrawing the United States from the alliance.
He’s not wrong about European defense spending, but he’s also not right. European countries have chronically underfunded their militaries for decades, have resisted addressing Europe’s fragmented defense industry, and have refused to borrow money jointly for defense projects.
Even with the biggest armed conflict in Europe since World War II, only two-thirds of NATO members (23 out of 32) have met their commitment to spend at least 2% of gross domestic product (GDP) on defense by 2024. And some – such as Germany – have used (shall we say) creative accounting to achieve this goal.
Remarkably, Trump’s threats may already be having an effect. European NATO states are in talks to increase defense spending to 3% of GDP by 2030.
But the president-elect’s singular focus on defense spending misses the broader point: larger European defense budgets will do little to advance US interests unless they are tied to a concrete plan and timetable for transferring deterrence and defense responsibilities for NATO’s conventional forces from the United States to European allies.
To implement the burden transfer, the Trump administration would need to take three steps. First, it should refuse to enter into an agreement in which European nations increase their defense spending by half or even one percentage point in exchange for maintaining a large military presence on the continent.
Second, it should set a clear timetable for transitioning the bulk of NATO’s presence on the eastern front from the U.S. to European militaries. For starters, the Trump administration should announce a withdrawal over the next two years of the 20,000 U.S. forces that have entered countries like Poland and Romania following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This should give European allies enough time to plan for the American withdrawal and to replace American units with European ones.
Finally, the Trump administration should initiate a phased withdrawal of US forces from the rest of the continent over the next 10 years, detailing which units and capabilities will be withdrawn when. This information would help NATO as an organization, and European member states in particular, prepare accordingly. For example, what additional missions will European armies have to take on? And what forces and capabilities will NATO need to cover these missions? The answers to these questions should serve as a basis for identifying European capability shortfalls, increasing spending and guiding procurement decisions.
American political leaders have long implored Europe to take its own defense seriously, but they have not forced change. This strategy of strategic patience has clearly not worked. It’s time to back Washington’s words with a plan.
Mark Hannah – Chief Executive Officer – Institute for Global Affairs at Eurasia Group
Put America first, but not alone
Joe Biden has sought to revive US leadership in the world. His “America’s back” slogan appealed to a pre-Trump status quo.
If Biden uncritically promoted the value of alliances and reflexively invoked an idealized rules-based international order, President-elect Trump risks making the opposite mistake: he uncritically rejects the value of alliances and reflexively renounces the norms of that order. After all, many of those alliances and much of that order, while vestiges of other geopolitical eras and in need of updating, have largely served US interests.
Trump and Trumpism are, among other things, a response to current foreign policy grievances. Faced with new geopolitical realities and domestic constraints, America cannot shape the world as it once did. Trump gives voice to the many Americans dissatisfied with the way the United States previously shaped the world. Multilateral institutions can craft cumbersome rules and frameworks that tie America’s hands, and allies have routinely shifted the costs of their security onto American taxpayers.
But these new realities and constraints should prompt Trump to reinvigorate rather than abandon alliances. While facing mounting debts, the US can hardly afford to continue to be the main counterweight to Russia in Europe, Iran in the Middle East and China in Asia. The less unipolar the world, the more important America’s alliances are.
But while the United States has largely used its post-Cold War alliances to reinforce political and economic alignment in exchange for US protection, Trump has an opportunity to take Europe out of complacency and bring back the traditional purpose of alliances: a way to aggregate capabilities against a common threat.
Emanuel Macron has long called for a more robust independent European military capability, and the Nordic and Baltic countries are also stepping up theirs. However, as Europe’s largest economy, Germany remains stubbornly unwilling to change course. Trump’s attitude towards security assistance to Ukraine clearly shows this: Europe must shape up and see fit to arm Ukraine or nobody will.
While South Korea, Japan and Taiwan have maintained stronger independent military capabilities, the same logic applies to East Asia. Japan and Taiwan have failed to upgrade their force structures and invest in domestic defense to a level that would credibly deter China, presumably assuming that the US will bail them out if ever necessary. Japan needs a stronger navy, and Taiwan needs to spend more on defense, investing in asymmetric capabilities, rather than buying a small number of state-of-the-art systems that would be useless against Chinese aggression.
America First need not be America alone. Trump has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reimagine America’s international leadership. As a visionary executive whose successful enterprise creates wealth for all sorts of stakeholders, Trump should see international politics as a not-always-zero sum. America First should not be at the expense of America’s allies and trading partners.
Heretics can be as blinded by dogma as the orthodoxies they attack. Ideological opposition to alliances can be as strategically confusing as ideological support for them. U.S. leadership in international organizations is an opportunity to imbue these institutions with democratic values and influence outcomes for the benefit of Americans. While America can and should begin to shift the burden of collective defense, America’s alliances have slowed the spread of nuclear weapons and allowed countries to grow and prosper in ways that benefit the United States.
With some of the most powerful democracies in Europe and Asia rife with political discord, President-elect Trump could present the United States as a champion of international cooperation, even as he is backed by populist support and prioritizes US interests. If, under Trump, the US leads the way in boldly and creatively tackling shared challenges – from cyberwarfare and terrorism to nuclear proliferation and the rise of powerful illiberal competitors to global norms – it would not only position America first, but help America grow.
Jennifer Kavanagh – Senior Fellow & Director of Military Analysis – Defense Priorities
Reducing America’s military footprint in Europe
During his first administration, Trump was skeptical of U.S. military engagement with Europe, calling NATO “obsolete” and berating European allies as free-riders.
Yet Trump has done little to reduce the US share of Europe’s defense burden. He half-heartedly tried, at the end of his term, to call for the withdrawal of 12,000 US troops from Germany, but ran out of time to force even this feeble move.
With his second chance, Trump would have to act decisively to significantly reduce the US military footprint in Europe from the current total of 100,000 troops, starting with the additional troops that President Joe Biden’s administration deployed during the war in Ukraine and then pushing toward the post-Cold War minimum of about 60,000 reached in 2013. To achieve this ambitious goal, Trump would have to withdraw his forces immediately, without a lengthy review of the global posture, which would give the opposition time to mobilize.
Withdrawal would serve US interests in two ways.
First, a smaller US military presence in Europe would accurately reflect US national security priorities and free up scarce dollars, troops, and equipment to support operations in the Indo-Pacific theater. As the first Trump administration recognized, China poses the greatest challenge to US national security interests because of its growing ability to project military power into East Asia, reduce US economic access to the region, and even, in the extreme, pose a direct threat to the US homeland.
While nuclear weapons mean Moscow will never be irrelevant, the economic and military threat Russia poses to the United States and its interests is limited. Washington does not want to see Russia invade Europe, but the war in Ukraine has demonstrated Russia’s weakness and provided evidence that Europe can defend itself, even without US support. Large U.S. deployments in Europe unnecessarily drain U.S. readiness and resources needed elsewhere.
Second, eliminating a substantial number of US forces would send a clear signal that Trump is serious about shifting Europe’s defense to the region itself. Trump is not the first president to bemoan NATO allies’ underspending. However, since the United States has always bailed out Europe in times of crisis, warnings about the limits of US support have no credibility. Only a sizeable and rapid withdrawal will catalyze much-needed changes in Europe’s defense spending and the development of a truly European concept and defense posture. In particular, in the rare cases where the United States has left its allies to face an increasingly dire security environment to respond on their own, it has stepped up its defense spending.
As he reduces the US presence in Europe, Trump should start with the 20,000 military forces added after 2022, especially those based on the NATO frontline. Given that Russia is unlikely to act against NATO allies while still tied to Ukraine, these forces are unnecessary for deterrence. Next, Trump should redeploy units and assets that could support U.S. operations in the Indo-Pacific, including some air and naval forces and some air defense and air support capabilities. Finally, US forces that discourage Europe from building its own ground combat assets should return home, including US Army brigade combat teams based in Poland and Germany.
Trump will face resistance in Washington and abroad if he follows this path. He should remind his critics that the US military presence in Europe was never intended to be enduring.
Rosemary Kelanic – Director, Middle East Program – Defense Priorities
Withdrawing US troops from Syria – Fighting terrorism is a distant labor
The Trump administration should end the deployment of 2,000 US troops to Syria and bring them home before conditions deteriorate amid the Syrian revolution. Their presence risks drawing the US into another Middle East quagmire as their core mission – fighting terrorism – has become remote work.
The US initially sent forces to Syria in 2015 to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has established a “caliphate”. But local actors such as the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), with US help, defeated ISIS in 2019 and dispossessed it of its territory. The little that remained of the original Islamic State remains tightly held in check by its many regional foes, including Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which leads the new regime in Damascus.
However, the terrorist attack on New Year’s Day that killed 15 revelers on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, led by a lone wolf US citizen apparently “inspired” by ISIS, has renewed fears that terrorist groups will set up “sanctuaries” in Syria of the kind al-Qaeda had in Afghanistan before the September 11 attacks.
This logic is flawed. These days, there is no need for boots on the ground to deny “sanctuaries” – if there ever were any – because there is no “sanctuary” within US reach. US intelligence and strike capabilities have become so sophisticated in the last 25 years that they can operate fully over the horizon. Troops in Syria can return home without degrading counterterrorism efforts against the remnants of ISIS or anyone else.
The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, for example, has not hampered Washington’s ability to uncover deadly plots against Russia and Iran in 2024 by ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K) against Russia and Iran. These plots succeeded not for lack of detection, but because the authorities in Moscow and Tehran refused to take U.S. intelligence warnings seriously. US intelligence uncovered and thankfully disrupted the 2024 “ISIS-inspired” plot against a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna because Austrian authorities heeded US tips about the plan.
Meanwhile, Syria is in revolution – and revolutions tend to get bloody. Assad’s relatively modern and relatively secular dynasty, which ruled for five decades, has been overthrown by Islamic fundamentalists. Significant bloodshed has been avoided so far, but if Syria follows the historical trend, we are likely to see violence and unrest as competing revolutionaries struggle to impose their vision on society. The French Revolution and the Russian Revolution, among others, spurred years of civil war and internal unrest before coalescing into a new equilibrium.
Keeping troops in Syria in the midst of a revolution jeopardizes them unnecessarily and risks drawing the United States into a distant conflict with few consequences for its national security. The Trump administration can withdraw U.S. troops and still accomplish its counterterrorism goals. There is no time to waste.
Justin Logan – Director, Defense and Foreign Policy Studies – Cato Institute
Ending Europe’s learned helplessness
Europe is the theater where the new Trump administration can make the biggest change for the better. NATO Europe’s combined GDP is 10 times that of its adversary, Russia. Its population is four times larger. Its current military spending is more than three times greater. This is not a continent for the United States to rule.
Yet at every meeting with European officials, the same song of learned helplessness is heard. You can’t trust us. If you leave, we will do something so self-destructive that it will end up hurting you. We can’t talk to each other or work together without you telling us what to do. We dislike cooperating with each other even more than we fear Russia. We’re congenitally incapable of fighting (or even deterring), and if Russia were to launch its nukes at us, we’d bend over and do whatever they say.
Either the act is uniformly well rehearsed or officials have fully internalized their own propaganda.
Trump should end this charade.
Germany is the center of the problem in Europe and should be the center of the solution. Unless it is forced to do so, Germany will never seriously engage in its own defense, much less in a leadership role in European security. Accordingly, the U.S. should force the issue by beginning the withdrawal of its own forces from Germany, with a focus on weakening the “teeth” versus the “tail.”
The place to start is in Vilseck, Germany, with the 2nd Cavalry Regiment. This regiment contains about 5,000 American soldiers who are leading the effort to deter Germany’s enemies and defeat them if necessary. The beginning of the withdrawal of the 2nd Cav Regiment would have been a strong signal to Berlin that it should prepare.
A second place to begin the withdrawal of American forces in Germany is at Ramstein Air Base, the largest concentration of Americans living abroad. More than 50,000 U.S. personnel are stationed at Ramstein to support the U.S. Air Forces in Europe. One objection to withdrawing from Ramstein is that the base supports American operations in the Middle East. But since those missions have been costly and dismal failures for over a generation, the answer should be that we will do even fewer of them.
By focusing on withdrawing U.S. combat forces from Europe, President Trump can get Europe’s attention and force it to look the problem squarely in the eye: the cheap trip is over.
Trump told Oprah Winfrey in 1988: “I would make our allies pay their fair share.” If he can make them pay their fair share, America won’t have to pay very much at all. And that would be a Zeitenwende for American strategy.
Christopher McCallion – Fellow – Defense Priorities
Finally turning America’s attention to Asia
The most important foreign policy issue for the incoming Trump administration – and for every administration for the foreseeable future – will be managing the US relationship with China. While there is broad consensus that China’s rise represents the most significant foreign policy challenge since the end of the Cold War, the issue has taken a backseat during the Biden administration, even as US-China relations have continued to deteriorate.
While U.S.-China relations will inevitably be defined largely by competition, a clear understanding of U.S. interests demands that this competition be limited. In many respects, competing successfully with China economically, technologically, and militarily depends less on “getting tough” with Beijing and more on constructive efforts at home and shifting security burdens to allies and partners in Asia.
The first thing the Trump administration should do is recognize China’s core national interests where they do not conflict with those of the United States. This includes recommitting to the substance of the One China policy, readopting a position of “strategic ambiguity” on Taiwan, avoiding treating China as illegitimate (e.g., referring to the PRC as the CCP), and refraining from signaling support for regime change or separatism. It also means abandoning the “democracy vs. autocracy” rhetoric of the Biden administration, maintaining regular dialog with Beijing, and establishing crisis management mechanisms.
The second thing the Trump administration should do is to shift the burden of deterring potential Chinese expansionism to East Asian states, acting as a backstop rather than a unilateral guarantor of security. By investing in affordable and relatively inexpensive defensive capabilities, even small states can maximize the defensive advantages presented by East Asia’s insular geography. This would deter China from aggression against its neighbors and prevent its domination of shared waters in the South China Sea. This defensive approach would make regional deterrence more resilient and flexible, while reducing direct US-China tensions and the risk of great power war.
Finally, Trump should shift the focus of economic competition away from attempts to isolate China and toward strengthening US indigenous capabilities. The US needs to rebuild its manufacturing base and become competitive again in “traditional” industries such as shipbuilding and steel, alongside high-tech industries such as semiconductors. Tariffs are just one of a range of industrial policy tools to pursue this goal, such as subsidies and local content requirements. The United States should create policies that attract STEM students to skilled jobs in engineering and manufacturing, not just in the highest value-added sectors of software and design.
Refocusing on the U.S.-China relationship inevitably means avoiding impasse in Europe and the Middle East. These entanglements not only drain much-needed resources and attention, but also complicate the ability of the United States to limit competition with China, push its rivals and adversaries together against the US, and increase the risks of escalation, making crises harder to resolve. The incoming administration should properly shift U.S. attention to Asia while rebuilding industry and infrastructure at home.
Charles Peña – Non-Resident Fellow – Defense Priorities
Recommitting to the One China policy
A war with China would clearly not be in the US national interest. The second Trump administration should start by recognizing this.
The United States and China are the world’s two largest economies. A war between the two would likely have disastrous consequences for both, with kn knock-on effects felt throughout the rest of the world.
Different simulations and war games produce different results as to who would win, but all show that such a war would extract a very large cost from the US military. This is because such a war would be easier for China fighting close to its borders than the US having to maintain a 6,000-mile-long disputed logistical tail against a regional power with modern weaponry.
In other words, this would not be the same as overthrowing Saddam Hussein or the Taliban, both of whom are weak military opponents. Moreover, US military engagement in the Taiwan Strait and the East China Sea would likely involve air or missile strikes on mainland China, raising the prospect of escalation with a nuclear-armed nuclear power with intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking US territory.
So not only is a war with China an uncertain proposition, it is also a very high risk. The incoming Trump administration must therefore craft its policy with China to avoid the potential outbreak of war – not at any cost, but at reasonable and realistic costs.
The new administration’s policy should incentivize Beijing to live with the status quo of a U.S. “One China” policy that formally recognizes the PRC as China’s only legal government and recognizes Taiwan as part of China, but without Taiwan directly under China’s control. This is a classic case of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, allowing Taiwan to be essentially independent so that the US can have unofficial relations with it, including defense arms sales to Taiwan.
Knowing that the Xi regime has a stated goal of being able to annex Taiwan, U.S. policy toward China should not be provocative (e.g., stationing troops in Taiwan or engaging in joint military exercises with Taiwan) or give Beijing a reason to take pre-emptive military action that could trigger a U.S. military response.
The framework for such a policy should put the Chinese military threat in perspective, recognizing that China lacks global power projection capability and therefore is not a direct threat to the US homeland and has a limited ability to dominate East Asia. Moreover, US friends and allies in the region have the economic capacity and should take primary responsibility to balance and deter Chinese aggression.
Rather than increasing the U.S. military presence in the region (which may be seen as a provocation by Beijing), the U.S. should encourage its friends and allies to act in their own security interests by acquiring anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities to enhance deterrence; deepening military cooperation; increasing joint operational, command and control, and communications capabilities; and conducting joint military exercises.
Ariel Petrovics – Assistant Research Scholar – University of Maryland School of Public Policy
Addressing the threat of nuclear proliferation cascades
The most pressing security concern facing the incoming Trump administration is the threat of nuclear proliferation. The pursuit of nuclear weapons in unstable regions not only increases the risk of mirror-tracking in non-nuclear neighbors, but can lead to military repositioning in nuclear powers and encourage newly armed states to behave aggressively.
Iran today poses the greatest threat to trigger such a proliferation cascade. It is surrounded by regional conflicts, with near proliferation risks (Saudi Arabia and Iraq), nuclear-armed rivals (Israel) and interests that are often in direct conflict with Washington’s.
The most important policy change the Trump administration should make is to reduce the US’s reliance on economic sanctions as a way to stop nuclear proliferation. Countries like Iran, with a history of resisting sanctions, already have trade and policy measures ready to undermine international sanctions and have proven capable of incurring large costs in defending their nuclear programs. This makes sanctions ineffective as counter-proliferation tools against Iran.
Moreover, sanctions are actually counterproductive. They impede the development of industry that could open up Iran’s economy and undermine Tehran’s policies of animosity and have increased anti-Western cooperation between China, Iran, Russia and North Korea. They could tie the hands of a presidential administration, requiring costly multinational commitments even after they have proved ineffective, or risk portraying the US as a weak agent for all other potential proliferators and thereby undermine any future sanctions effort.
Nuclear sanctions, more than any other response, can serve as a ball and chain, tying the administration to a hopeless and costly effort, or risk undermining future sanctions efforts.
Rather than relying on sanctions, the United States should consider using limited nuclear cooperation agreements (NCAs). These agreements have the greatest chance of reining in Iran’s nuclear program and the least risk of counterproductive proliferation.
Iran will never agree to total nuclear abstinence or exaggerated linkages (such as injecting limits on ballistic missiles). The Iranian government has tied its domestic and international prestige to harnessing nuclear technology, providing cheap domestic energy and freeing up its oil and gas reserves for profitable exports.
But NCAs can ease Iran’s transition to more proliferation-resistant technology while demanding strict inspections that deter overshooting and provide early warning for violations. The trick is to find limited measures that both can accept. The United States can’t deliver directly without a 123 Agreement – which requires congressional review and imposes strict oversight over all potential nuclear facilities – and that’s a deal-breaker for both. Iran cannot limit itself to dependence on foreign powers.
A sweet spot for Iran could be enlisting private corporations to replace Iran’s risky heavy-water reactors (such as Arak and Khondab) with more proliferation-resistant light-water reactors. Coupling this with spent fuel collection and reprocessing would mitigate the risk of Iran developing a plutonium bomb, while reducing Iran’s operational costs for civilian energy. Together, these efforts would inject oversight and limits into both ends of the nuclear cycle while reducing the financial and technological burden on Tehran.
The best way to accomplish these policy changes is through private conversations with both Tehran and US allies. Unpredictable public statements can be misinterpreted as disingenuous public pandering, communicating inaccurate red lines, or inviting the complication of the domestic debate. This is not to say that public messaging is never appropriate, but it is most effective when more complete private conversations follow.
Barry Posen – Ford International Professor of Political Science, Security Studies Program
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Right-sizing the Pentagon through a competition
President-elect Donald Trump seems to believe that the US government spends money wastefully. He also seems to believe that the US grand strategy needs a major overhaul. He should explore these two beliefs together with a political and budget competition at the Pentagon.
Here’s how it would work. Three policy-strategy-budget teams would be assembled. Each team would include political appointees, senior civil servants, intelligence community experts, and military officers. Each team would be asked to cut $50 billion a year from the Pentagon’s top line over the next 10 years. It would also be asked to reallocate $50 billion a year.
Each team would have to explain their cuts and reallocations in strategic terms, including how their plans conform to their interpretation of President Trump’s strategic vision as they understand it. The teams were not allowed to discuss their plans among themselves. But each team’s approach would be up to them. The teams could even come up with identical plans that might please or displease the president.
At the end of the competition, President Trump would be informed and could pick the winner. If no team failed to produce a successful proposal, the Defense Department could – as most Pentagon bureaucrats, military officers and congressional defense experts expect – continue business as usual.
Rachel Rizzo – Non-Resident Senior Fellow – Atlantic Council
Prioritize defense and security dialogue with Europe
In his first year in office, President Trump should prioritize the U.S.-EU defense and security dialogue, with the goal of creating a 10- to 15-year vision for European strategic autonomy.
Announced at the 2021 US-EU summit, the Biden administration and the EU created the dialogue to “strengthen the EU-US strategic security and defense partnership and the transatlantic link.” It has only met twice since its creation – once in 2022 and once in late 2023 – and only at the deputy assistant secretary of state and deputy assistant secretary of defense levels to discuss cooperation with Ukraine, the Western Balkans and the defense industry.
During these meetings, the officials “exchanged updates on their respective security and defense policy frameworks and welcomed the signing of the administrative agreement between the European Defense Agency and the U.S. Department of Defense.” Clearly, the Biden administration has under-utilized the Dialogue and there is little to say in terms of accomplishments.
This is a missed opportunity.
President Trump should elevate this Dialogue so that it meets at the Under Secretary of State and Under Secretary of Defense level, with the new Defense Commissioner leading the European side. The basic objective should be to determine where the EU should pursue defense industrial development independent of the United States over the next 10-15 years. It is not enough to outline where the two sides should continue to cooperate; instead, the US should actively support Europe in building its own defense industrial base.
This means that the incoming Trump administration must empower the European defense commissioner and make clear that the president and his team see this official as a bridge between NATO, the EU, and the US and as someone who will help lighten the US load in Europe.
The current arrangement in which the US provides the bulk of Europe’s continental defense no longer makes sense and goes beyond the fact that US geopolitical priorities continue to shift to the Indo-Pacific. It is a reflection of a system moving away from American unipolarity. Europe must shoulder most of this responsibility in a multipolar world, which means the EU must take a greater role in creating a stronger and more effective defense industrial base. It will need US support to do this.
John Schuessler – Non Resident Member – Defense Priorities
Revive the Ludlow Amendment to stop unnecessary wars
In January 1938, a bill sponsored by Representative Louis Ludlow of Indiana lost in the House of Representatives by a narrow margin of 188 to 209. The bill would have amended the U.S. Constitution to require a national referendum to confirm any congressional declaration of war unless the United States had already been attacked.
Having run for a second term as an anti-war populist, President Donald Trump should consider reviving the Ludlow Amendment, or at least the spirit behind it.
Of course, the prospects for passage of any revived Ludlow Amendment would be dim. After all, the original was defeated despite having been proposed at the height of anti-interventionist sentiment in the 1930s, with three-quarters of the public behind it, according to a Gallup poll. This was before the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor, before “isolationism” was discredited, and before Congress ceded war power to the presidency. It would be remarkable, indeed, for Trump to deny himself this power and give it back to the people.
However, it is time for a debate about where the war powers should lie. Trump is among those who believe that an elite establishment wields too much influence over American foreign policy, an establishment that is too ready to risk war when the interests at stake don’t justify it and too slow to end unnecessary wars once they start. In the recent presidential campaign, Trump extended this criticism, arguing that the United States has not exercised all possible levers to stop the ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
If Trump is to take Trump at his word that the foreign policy establishment needs to be reined in so that the United States is involved in fewer wars, then something in the spirit of the Ludlow Amendment should appeal to him. The timing is particularly important given the shift to unipolarity and the potential for great power conflict. The next war is less likely to be a protracted counterinsurgency in a failed state than a high-intensity struggle against a major power in the shadow of nuclear weapons.
Given the potential costs and risks, it is more important than ever that the American people meaningfully consent to any wars they are asked to fight. A revived Ludlow Amendment might raise the bar too high in this regard, but a debate around it will at least remind us all that going to war must be a democratic decision.
Joshua Shifrinson – Associate Professor of International Relations – University of Maryland School of Public Policy
Eliminating military commitments and demands that no longer serve US interests
The United States faces a period of strategic insolvency. This insolvency reflects too many security commitments, too few military resources to serve those commitments, and too much domestic demand for U.S. time and treasure, all in the face of growing international opposition to U.S. strategic impulses.
While the problem is clear, many in Washington seem in denial. They prefer instead to argue that the United States should stay the course, demonstrate American “leadership” (of an unspecified nature), and seek – somehow – to find and pay for ways to fulfill its increasingly difficult obligations.
President-elect Trump has the opportunity to address this insolvency by changing the operational logic of the US security posture. Instead of pretending that US commitments are sacrosanct, Trump should announce that the United States’ time as the security provider of first resort in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East is over.
Moving forward – so the argument goes – the United States will adapt to changing strategic conditions and focus on those commitments that are both vital to meeting the geopolitical challenges of the day and (crucially) lack the means to provide its security.
The objective here would be a prudent pruning of commitments (and therefore military requirements) that no longer serve American interests, coupled with a recalibration of how, where, and why the US will act abroad. In doing so, the proposed doctrine would extend the Trump administration’s first announcement that a “new era of great power competition” has arrived and capitalize on the Biden administration’s recognition that the post-Cold War era is over. In effect, Trump would embrace change and adapt to the writing on the great strategic wall.
While ambitious, this push for a recalibration of where and how the US will act abroad is unprecedented. Throughout his first year in office, President Richard Nixon laid out the doctrine that soon bore his name. Initially focused on shifting the US presence in Asia, the final version of the Nixon Doctrine clearly undermined what the United States will and will not do abroad. “America cannot and will not devise all the plans, cannot conceive all the programs, cannot execute all the decisions, and will not undertake all the defense of the free nations of the world,” Nixon said. “We will help where it makes a real difference and is considered in our best interests.” Change – not reflexive embrace of what had come before – was necessary.
Just as Nixon was willing to shake up the U.S. approach to engagement and alliances half a century ago, so too should Trump embrace adapting to new circumstances. Having demonstrated in his first term that he is willing to challenge political orthodoxies, he should use the first year of his second term to put the US strategic house in order, creating a new logic to guide America’s security posture.
William Walldorf – Senior Fellow – Defense Priorities
Abandon President Biden’s grand bargain
President-elect Donald Trump is determined to expand the Abraham Accords, a series of bilateral agreements between Israel and several Middle Eastern and North African nations. However, Trump should resist the temptation to revive Joe Biden’s grand bargain to normalize Saudi-Israeli relations, an extension of the Abraham Accords.
Trump must realize, first and foremost, that Biden’s grand bargain brings no new benefits to US national security. Supposed US gains – such as close Saudi-Israeli cooperation against Iran or preventing China from gaining some sort of foothold in the Middle East – are things the United States gets regardless of the deal. Saudi Arabia and Israel have long been close allies, and normalization will add nothing to that. China has neither the interests nor the ability, given its challenges in Asia, to come close to creating some kind of alternative security structure in the Middle East. It is a marginal strategic strategic player in the region and will be for a long time to come, due to deep structural conditions that are not likely to change anytime soon.
Second, if Trump adopts Biden’s grand bargain, he will push the United States into a series of new engagements in the Middle East that are likely to fuel conflict and further bog the United States down in the region. Biden’s deal includes US commitments to create a formal alliance with Saudi Arabia (probably also with Israel) and to build a nuclear enrichment facility on Saudi territory (the first time the United States has done so outside US territory).
Backed into a corner, Iran will probably panic over these new US commitments and almost certainly build nuclear weapons to ensure its security. Saudi Arabia will respond in kind (Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has promised as much), as will other countries in the region. A dangerous spiral of nuclear competition will follow. The security blanket provided by the new US defense pacts with Saudi Arabia and Israel will also encourage both to be aggressive in their use of force. Washington will have to bail them out when they get into trouble.
If Trump follows Biden’s model for Saudi-Israeli normalization, the odds that the United States will find itself in a major new war in the Middle East will increase substantially. With the threat of terrorism greatly reduced and the U.S. all the less dependent on the Middle East for energy, Washington has no interest in fighting such a war. Nor does the American public – especially MAGA Republicans – want war.
In short, Trump needs to keep US interests in mind as he mulls extending the Abraham Accords. As with Biden, Saudi Arabia and Israel will ask a lot of Trump to normalize relations – even more than the US gave up to get the Abraham Accords. If he wants to do what’s best for the United States, Trump needs to say no to most of this for the sake of US national security.
Stephen Wertheim – Senior Fellow, American Statecraft Program
Reducing the risk of a Chinese war with Taiwan – through diplomacy
One of the greatest threats to America’s national interests today is the possibility of armed conflict across the Taiwan Strait. The most significant and immediate action that the new administration can take to reduce this threat is to issue new diplomatic assurances designed to show China that the United States remains committed to the status quo across the strait and will follow traditional U.S. policies in this regard. This could be accomplished in dramatic fashion by negotiating a fourth joint US-China communiqué, the first since 1982.
Donald Trump might seem an unlikely figure to take up this idea. His first term was notable for his tough stances on China. Since Trump left office, tensions over Taiwan have worsened, and the president-elect himself has begun warning of “World War III”.
By assuring China that the United States is not trying to permanently separate Taiwan from the mainland, Trump could reverse the descent into conflict, making Beijing less likely to fear facing a closing window to prevent the island from breaking away forever. Trump may want to correct the mistakes of his predecessor, Joe Biden, who publicly pledged to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack andtwice suggested that independence was up to the Taiwanese people.
Whether the assurances take the form of a joint communiqué, a unilateral statement or a private declaration, they should contain two elements in particular. First, to adapt the Odd Arne Westad historian’s proposal, Trump should announce that the United States would in no way support Taiwan’s independence unless the island faced armed attack. This assurance would be stronger than Washington’s usual expression that it does not support Taiwan’s independence. Therefore, it would demonstrate that the United States is serious about discouraging Taipei from moving toward independence and would signal that U.S. policy would not be altered by any unilateral action that Taipei might take.
Second, as analyst Michael Swaine has suggested, Trump should affirm that the United States will accept any final resolution of cross-Strait differences – including the potential outcome of unification – as long as it is reached peacefully, without coercion and with the consent of the Taiwanese people. In return, China could scale back its military activities around the island and declare that it has no deadline for resolving the Taiwan issue.
This exchange of assurances would cost the United States little and could reduce tensions over the issue that is most likely to plunge the world’s two major powers into direct conflict. Even if Beijing’s actions remain unaffected, the reassurances would help convince Asia-Pacific countries that China, not the United States, is to blame for further escalation – a perception that would prove essential, in the event of a crisis, to rally support for Taiwan and put pressure on China.
If Beijing reduced its provocative behavior toward Taiwan, the effect could be profound. After four years, especially if 2027 passes without the Chinese invasion that some in Washington fear, domestic pressures building toward confrontation in both capitals could be eased and the risk of catastrophic war could be significantly reduced.
Source: here
On Thursday, the decommissioned aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy (CV 67) is scheduled to leave the Port of Philadelphia for its final destination – the scrap yards in Brownsville, Texas.
Action News, the local ABC affiliate, reports that the departure was originally scheduled for Wednesday, but was slightly delayed. After departure, the carrier will be visible to those who wish along the banks of the Delaware River and throughout the outbound transit through the Delaware Bay.
The USS John F. Kennedy was the last U.S. Navy aircraft carrier with a conventionally powered steam engine. She was built as the fourth aircraft carrier of the Kitty Hawk class, but was heavily modified during construction and received her own designation. and was delivered at the height of the Vietnam War. She spent her war years in the Mediterranean Sea, keeping watch over a troubled Middle East and aiding the US response during the brief Yom Kippur War of 1973. He survived a collision with the cruiser USS Belknap in 1975 and another collision with the destroyer USS Bordelon the following year.
Kennedy joined air operations over Beirut in the Lebanon crisis in 1984 and was recalled from a courtship to join Operation Desert Storm in 1990. Its air wing was also active over Afghanistan in 2022 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
In 2005, the USS John F. Kennedy’s yard period was deemed too costly, and the Navy decided to withdraw her from service. She was decommissioned in 2007 and has been stored in Philadelphia for the past 18 years, awaiting final disposition. Several proposals to turn her into a museum were submitted, but ultimately were unsuccessful. The USS Kennedy and USS Kitty Hawk were sold as a pair to International Shipbreaking in October 2021; Kitty Hawk was towed to the yard in June 2022 and scrapped, with Kennedy next in line.
The Navy has named the second Ford-class aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79), and construction is underway at Newport News. The $13 billion nuclear-powered supercarrier is scheduled to be delivered later this year, 14 years after the 2011 steel-cutting ceremony.
Source: here
Iran’s navy takes delivery of ‘intelligence destroyer’ – The Maritime Executive – 15.01.2025
After several years of teasing announcements, the Iranian Navy (Nedaja) has finally attributed to the press its first published photo of IRINS Zagros (H313), which it describes as an intelligence-gathering destroyer. The ship was photographed conducting sea trials off Bandar Abbas.
The ship was officially launched on January 15, in a ceremony overseen by Chief of the Armed Forces General Staff Major General Mohammad Bagheri, Iranian Army Commander Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi, Commander Nedaja, Rear Admiral Shahram Irani and Minister of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics Aziz Nasirzadeh.
For the past year at least, IRINS Zagros has been outfitted alongside the Bandar Abbas naval port. The ship’s design is clearly based on that of the Moudge-class frigate, Nedaja’s main class. This is an Iranian development from Vosper Thorneycroft Alvand’s original Vosper Thorneycroft Alvand design and now almost entirely fitted with Iranian-produced subsystems.
However, it appears that the ship may have been extended. From a reconnaissance perspective, the ship has three large radomes above its superstructure, and two side funnels have replaced the central funnel characteristic of the Moudge class.
For a ship that Nedaja described as a signal-based intelligence-gathering destroyer, the Zagros has the expected array of radomes and antennas. However, it does not appear to mount an Asr radar, which normally equips Moudge-class frigates. This is a curious omission, as direction-finding capability is an essential part of the signal-based intelligence analytical process. Even more curious for a ship described as a destroyer, it has no cannon on board. Nor does it have missile containers on deck, nor tubular hatches behind which anti-aircraft or anti-aircraft missiles would be launched vertically.
The lack of armament, except that which could be carried by a helicopter on board, is compounded by the fact that the Zagros was not given a pennant number in sequence with other Moudge-class frigates. Instead, she was given a unique pennant number in 3 series, not seen elsewhere in the Nedaja. This, coupled with her lack of armament, suggests that the Nedaja could class the Zagros as an unarmed auxiliary in order to gain better access to foreign ports. In this regard, Nedaja could follow the practice of the Chinese PLA Navy, which is trying to classify its electromagnetic signal intelligence-gathering vessels, such as the Yuan Wang 5, as research and surveillance vessels. However, given Nedaja’s self-description of Zagros as a signal-based intelligence-gathering platform, this tactic is unlikely to prove effective, and host nations receiving diplomatic requests for prolonged port visits by Zagros will be rightly suspicious.
TheZagros will likely undergo an extended period of sea trials before its first operational deployment and may still be equipped with a suite of defensive armaments. As it is currently under-equipped, it seems Zagros would have to sail as part of a naval task force if it ventured into potentially hostile waters where there could be a mine threat.
Source: here
The mooring system has a Dutch patent, but was entirely made in Romania. Photo source: collage captures Digi24 The port of Constanta is modernizing with an innovative ship berthing system. It will allow the operation of large tonnage ships and will be used when the port is crowded. The system has a Dutch patent but was made entirely in Romania. It will save ship operators thousands of euros a day.
The two buoys are installed in the area of the southern breakwater in the port, and the investment amounted to 6,500,000 lei, from the funds of the Administration of Sea Ports Constanta Iulia Stanciu, Digi24 journalist: We are in the port of Constanta, in the south of Agigea, a few kilometers from the berths where the ships come with cargo. Here, in a sheltered area of the southern breakwater, a modern mooring system has been installed.
We are talking about two yellow buoys with a diameter of 5 meters each, where large ships of up to 70 thousand tons can berth. Under the new system, ships will no longer have to dock as the cargo will be transported from the barges directly from the barges directly to the ships.
The berthing point will be used in particular when the port is overcrowded, when until now operators had to wait up to two weeks to unload cargo.
Alexandru Sintu, commercial director of the transport company: “It costs us, as ship operators, quite a lot to wait in the port roadstead, and with such investments the waiting time is automatically reduced when the port is congested and the berth is not free. In this way, operators can save several thousand euros a day.
The system was made entirely in Romania. The buoys were ready in five months, then tested for a week.
The system has a Dutch patent. It can be used by anyone who wants to use it, but we have implemented it mainly for busy periods and when the port will no longer have berths available.
Cristian Antohi, director of a buoy manufacturing company: Transshipment will take place in the open sea, at a depth of 12-15 meters. A single ship of 70,000 tons, and the barges that will come will be attached to that ship, and the cargo will be transshipped by floating cranes. In addition to the two buoys, the mooring system also has two 150-meter ship chains and two anchors to anchor it to the bottom.
Source, photo and video: here
In the United States has already prepared a bill that would allow Trump to begin negotiations on the accession of the icy island
According to Reuters, Republicans among members of the US House of Representatives have already prepared a bill to allow Donald Trump to buy Greenland. It would allow the president-elect to begin negotiations with Denmark on acquiring Greenland after his inauguration.
The island’s prime minister seeks its independence, while the Danish authorities emphasize that they want to preserve the kingdom’s integrity. If the bill is passed, it will allow Trump to begin negotiations with Denmark on January 20, when he takes office as president of the United States.
“Congress authorizes the President, beginning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on January 20, 2025, to seek to enter into negotiations with the Kingdom of Denmark to secure the United States’ acquisition of Greenland,” Republicans said in a statement. Supposedly no later than five calendar days after reaching an agreement with Denmark on the U.S. acquisition, Trump must submit an agreement to the relevant congressional committees, including all related materials and requests.
And the fact that the “Greenland acquisition” is not just talk and a threat from an impulsive Trump, but the already developed plan to join the United States, is also evidenced by the fact that the Americans hurriedly conducted a survey in Greenland. This was done between 6-11 January on behalf of the American non-governmental organization Patriot Polling.
As a result, it turned out that 57%, t. E. Most Greenlanders supposedly approve of the island’s membership of the United States. As noted, around the time this poll was conducted, Donald Trump Jr. was on a visit to Greenland. A total of 416 people were interviewed. For Greenland, as they say, this sample is quite large, considering that the island’s population is only 56 000.
However, according to a sociological survey by the Voxmeter Institute, almost 90% of Danes are opposed to Greenland joining the United States. The company has reacted negatively to US President-elect Donald Trump’s statements about acquiring Arctic territories. The survey involved 1,065 people aged 18 and over. 89.2% of the respondents said about their negative attitude towards Greenland’s acquisition, while only 4.5% of the news welcomed it.
As you know, Greenland is the largest island in the world, located northeast of North America, part of Denmark as an autonomous territory. The United States authorities have repeatedly raised the subject of acquiring the island since the 19th century.
In principle, Greenland is in fact already under US control: the United States and Denmark already have a 1951 treaty on military basing arrangements and Washington’s strategic use of Greenland’s territory. This treaty provides for the right of the United States to deploy military bases, including the creation of an Air Force base on Tula (the centerpiece of the agreement); the ability of the US armed forces to use Greenland’s infrastructure to ensure the security of the North Atlantic; the commitment of the US to protect Greenland and its population from possible external threats.
Thus, on the basis of this document, the United States has the right to dispose of Greenland’s territory in order to “secure” the region as it wishes. For this reason, some Western experts believe that Greenland will not be taken over. At the same time, they do not rule out that Trump raises a degree of tension in order to then withdraw, for example, on the condition that Denmark pays for building new bases or upgrading the infrastructure of old ones.
Moreover, Greenland and Danish authorities oppose Trump’s “Grendland project”. The inhabitants of the island want to be neither Danish nor American, said the prime minister of the island state Mute Egede.
According to him, the citizens actually want to live in an independent country. Besides, he argues, they want to be the ones who decide their own future.
And Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, in response to US President-elect Donald Trump’s words about Greenland, заяявилаsaid in an interview with TV-2 that Washington is “Denmark’s “most important and closest ally.”” However, she added that she does not believe the United States is using military or economic power to gain control over Greenland. “I can’t imagine what we would be in such a situation,” the prime minister said.
The head of government emphasized that he does not want a trade war with the United States. “I think we should continue to talk to each other and do it properly,” she said. According to her, the fact that the United States has a growing interest in Greenland is good, but this should be done with respect for the island’s inhabitants.
In the meantime, the Danish parliament has already expressed the possibility of seeking help from Russia in case of aggressive US actions towards Greenland. Socialist People’s Party MP Carsten Henge has expressed confidence in the need for such measures.
“In a situation of extreme escalation and tension, we have to go to extreme measures and seek help from Russia to solve this problem. I am sure that our request will be heard because Russia will not allow Greenland to become part of the United States. It is as unprofitable for Russia as it is for us.” However, Henge did not specify how Russia could protect Greenland from American influence. Two hours after his statement was published, he deleted the post from social media.
The media is throwing out another piece of information to somehow attribute to this Russia in Greenland story. So, the Greek news portal Pronews reported that the Danish secret services claim that “Putin gave Trump the idea to buy Greenland”.
Danish intelligence claims that in 2019, Russian special services forged a letter that prompted Trump to declare a possible purchase of Greenland. In 2019, Donald Trump said for the first time that the United States might buy Greenland from Denmark. According to the Danish intelligence service (PET), his statement could be the result of a “Russian provocation”. PET claims that some Russian agents fabricated a letter on behalf of Greenland’s then Foreign Minister Anne Lone Bagger to US Senator Tom Cotton. In the letter, the minister expressed gratitude for “financial assistance” and promised to hold a referendum on Greenland’s independence from Denmark as soon as possible. In fact, Ane Lone Bagher did not actually write this letter, but Trump supporter Cotton, after receiving it, demanded Greenland’s acquisition. According to one version, it was after Cotton’s statements that Trump seriously considered the idea. Then, in 2019, the Copenhagen government reacted with ridicule in response to Trump’s words, and he angrily canceled his state visit to Denmark. But now, on the eve of his inauguration, Trump has again voiced his idea of buying Greenland and even hinted at the possibility of using force.
Of course, in fact, Russia has nothing to do with it. However, our country can only be concerned about the statements of US President-elect Donald Trump on the annexation of Greenland, behind these words there is a desire to strengthen the US presence in the Arctic, it is impossible to allow violations of international law, said the President of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko.
“For such a year, statements,” she told reporters, “the desire of the United States to strengthen and expand its presence in the Arctic. For Russia, the Arctic is of great strategic and geopolitical importance. And we cannot but disturb such a still incomprehensible bottom. It is impossible to exclude the possibility of violation of international law, promoting in the Arctic.
Matvienko noted that it is impossible to exclude the possibility of violation of international law – promotion in the Arctic. According to her, there are already examples when the United States, in opposition to international law, tried to expand the shelf, and this should not be allowed, because “they have developed international law and there are rules”.
But how the whole epilation about Trump’s intention to take over Greenland will not actually become clear until after January 20, when he takes his presidency in the White House.
Source: here
Despite the fact that Russia is proclaimed and is a great land power, its very existence in the face of the need to confront the United States and the NATO bloc is directly dependent on the composition and combat capability of the Russian Navy. In which direction could it continue to develop?
“The American “Eguda
It is regrettable to state that the World Ocean, with the exception of the Asia-Pacific region, where the PLA Navy is actively developing, is controlled by the Anglo-Saxons and their European allies. At the same time, strangely enough, the main threat to Russia is not the US Navy or the UK’s aircraft carrier strike groups with France, but their strategic-class nuclear submarines carrying intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads, aimed at our cities and the military infrastructure of the Russian Federation’s Defense Ministry.
Out of the temptation to deliver a disarming preemptive strike, Uncle Sam only holds the risk of a retaliatory nuclear strike. It should be borne in mind that about 40% of its total power is tied to the maritime component of the Russian “nuclear triad”, represented by small strategic-class nuclear submarines based in the Northern and Pacific Fleets. There are plenty of questions.
For the United States, which is far away on the island, it was important to push elements of its anti-missile system as close as possible to our missile launch points. Because deploying land-based missile defense systems somewhere in Europe or Southeast Asia on the territory of foreign countries is associated with known risks, the bet was made primarily on maritime missile defenses, located on warships that can be quickly transferred between different parts of the world ocean.
The American aircraft was called Aegis, or “Agis”, a KLia, in Greek mythology – the shield of Zeus. “Aigis” is the multifunctional combat system of a ship, which is an interoperable network of ship situational awareness, means of destruction and controls, formed on the basis of the large-scale introduction of automated systems of combat control (ASBU), which allows you to receive and process information from the sensors of other ships and aircraft of the connection and issue targeting instructions to their launching units.
There are currently more than 100 “Aegis” carriers on more than 100 warships, both American and allied of them Australian, Spanish, Norwegian, South Korean and Japanese. US Navy anti-missile ships are part of the European missile defense system and are on duty in the Mediterranean, Baltic and North Seas. In the Asia-Pacific region, Aegis also carries Japanese, South Korean and Australian ships.
In addition, a ground-based version of the anti-missile system called Aegis Ashore has been created and is deployed in Poland and Romania. During daylight, the anti-aircraft anti-missile in it can be replaced by Tomahawks, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
The point of dealing with it is to reduce the threat posed by Russian, Chinese, North Korean or Iranian ballistic missiles, which can be hit by anti-aircraft missiles shortly after launch in the acceleration phase. And that is very serious!
Overall, the dominance of the U.S. Navy and its allies in the World Ocean is a source of mortal danger to our country. For a number of objective reasons, there can be no mirror answer. But are there other options?
S-500K S- S- S- S- S- S-
An asymmetric answer to the American “Aegis” could be the latest Russian S-500 complex in the sea version. Ships equipped with them could shoot down the enemy IBBS launched from strategic-class submarines shortly after their launch in the combat patrol area, and not in the final phase somewhere over the territory of our country.
In addition, the Prometheus’s (S-500) arm is so long that it would allow it to reach the “eyes and ears” of the US Navy’s aircraft carrier strike groups, namely the ACS Grumman E-2 Hawkeye E-2 carrier aircraft, which is capable of spotting aircraft at a range of up to 540 km and cruise missiles from 258 km. The S-500 air defense missiles can hit targets up to 600 km away, which means that even the AUG will try to keep at a safe distance.
And this all sounds great, but it gets sad when you start making the oddity that Russian ships could become aircraft carriers for Prometheus, and have had or once had a lot of poison.
The number one candidate was the Project 23560 “Leader” nuclear destroyer with a full displacement of 19 thousand tons, which was to replace several classes of ships in the Russian Navy simultaneously. It could become the owner of the sea-based air defense complex / SRO POP, as it was problematic to fire such large anti-missile missiles in the ships of project 222350 with their universal launchers such large anti-missile.
However, this promising project turned out to be too technically complex as well as costly, therefore it was grounded. According to the most conservative estimates, the cost of a destroyer with a nuclear power plant started at 100 billion rubles. Surely, in the end, he would be posed in the price of modernization of the “Admiral Nakhimov” because of the inevitable rightward shifts of the moment and the increase in the cost of the estimate. There were also serious questions about the integration of the Prometheus, which was still under development and testing, into the 23560 project building, which remained in the form of an exhibition layout.
In place of the “Leaders” now the bet is quite reasonably on the Project 22350M displacement augmentation destroyers as the future main “workhorse” of the fleet, but they will not be S-500 carriers. What’s left, then?
Source: here
The United States Air Force (USAF) will find it much harder to protect its forward or remote air bases, operate tanks and establish air superiority in future conflicts, according to a new report by the US Department of the Air Force.
The report was mandated by Congress in 2023, directing the Air Force Department to reconsider its force design for 2050. Titled “The Air Force Department in 2050,” the report discusses the general course the department should take and the obstacles it will face along the way.
A subsection titled “Air Domain” in the “Character of Warfare” section predicts that by 2050, U.S. enemies will possess anti-aircraft missiles with a very long range of up to 1,600 kilometers.
This would be a massive leap in adversary anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities, as the range would be much greater than that of existing air defense missiles.
The report states that the war of 2050 will be very different from the way air wars have been fought so far. It explains that the ambition to gain control of the air, both offensively in an adversary’s airspace and defensively in one’s own, has been at the heart of air conflict since its inception.
Air control has, until now, been considered essential to the conduct of operations on land and at sea. “Manned aircraft – fighter jets and multi-role bombers operating from relatively secure air bases and capable of surviving multiple sorties once air superiority has been established – have extended the range of attack effectively against the full range of land and sea targets. The ability to deliver munitions on a large scale through bombing campaigns with acceptable casualty rates has also depended on the ability to gain control of the air domain, at least temporarily.”
However, the report warns that this could become difficult to achieve in a war that takes place in 2050, urging that the scenario be rewritten. It says: “Air control will continue to be essential to military success, but how, when and where it is achieved are all subject to change.”
It elaborates by stating: “Two fundamental developments make this necessary. The first is the vulnerability of forward-located fixed bases (and, to some extent, even remote air bases) to precision missile attacks. The second is the expansion of anti-aircraft weapons’ areas of engagement to unprecedented, almost limitless distances.”
First, the expansion of anti-air weapons poses a massive risk to the USAF in a potential conflict with adversaries such as China and Russia.
In particular, it is anticipated that anti-aircraft missiles “with ranges in excess of 1,000 miles and backed by space-based sensors” may pose a threat to Air Force operations. Such long-range weapons will threaten “aircraft, such as tankers, which have traditionally operated with impunity”.
The restriction on tanker operation would mean a limited number of sorties that fighters and bombers can make in a conflict without refueling. This may become particularly worrisome in the event of a conflict in the Indo-Pacific, where the US would not have home ground advantage. More importantly, these anti-air missiles would be launched from any platform – dry, sea or air.
Although the report does not specifically name any adversary while making this prediction, it can be linked to China’s rapid military buildup and deployment of long-range weapons in all areas.
Escalating tensions in at least two significant hot spots in the Indo-Pacific – the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait – have heightened the possibility of conflict between the US and China. So both sides are preparing for a potential battle or at least a confrontation with limited weapons.
China currently has air defense systems such as the S-400, which has a range of about 400 kilometers, the HQ-9, which has a range of about 300 kilometers, and the HQ-22, which has a range of about 170 kilometers.
It has also developed a new HQ-19 air defense system, which is generally intended for ballistic missile defense and has a speculated range of 1,000 to 3,000 kilometers.
The other fundamental threat to achieving air superiority highlighted by the report is the vulnerability of its forward operating bases.
Long-range missiles threaten US forward bases
The US Department of the Air Force’s 2050 report highlights the vulnerability of forward air bases used by the USAF against precision missiles.
“China’s military modernization program has been largely focused on investments in long-range precision, initially at a few hundred miles and now at over 1,000.”
The report further notes that China’s test of fractional orbital hypersonic hypersonic orbital vehicles has previously shown that conventional capabilities can achieve intercontinental precision. What’s more, China has already achieved significant success in medium-range air, land, and sea systems that could reach the so-called second island chain (Japan’s islands stretching to Guam) and beyond.
“In 2050, we should expect to be under threat from ultra-long-range precision weapons at any range and launched from any area, including space. There will be no sanctuary from these weapons.” This will make it much more difficult for the US to establish air superiority. The enemy could attack forward bases in Guam, Japan and other Pacific territories and destroy the runways, thus denying USAF fighters or bombers the chance to operate from these facilities.
Moreover, slow-moving, low-flying refueling tankers are already at risk from Chinese air-to-air and ground-to-air missiles, but would be particularly vulnerable when operating on regular flight routes from Guam and several other Pacific islands. In particular, the USAF is working to improve the survivability of these tanks, as Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall outlined in a Jan. 13 interaction.
Speaking after the release of the Department of the Air Force 2050 report, Kendall said adversary weaponry will continue to advance in accuracy and range. “Intercontinental effects will be conventional,” according to Kendall, which presents “a very big problem.”
However, Kendall added that forward aircraft deployment will always be necessary, despite the increasing difficulty of fighting in contested airspace. That said, the vulnerability of forward bases has been specifically highlighted by the US Air Force’s new Deployable Infrastructure Action Plan, released in December 2024.
In addition, a Stimson Center report, “Cratering Effects: Chinese Missile Threats to US Airbases in the Indo-Pacific,” also highlighted the same challenge and warned that no countermeasures, or even a set of countermeasures, would be sufficient to stop the People’s Liberation Army’s missile force from attacking the runways. Instead, it called for the USAF to adopt the Agile Combat Employment concept, which calls for dispersing operations on a larger scale across a number of different locations.
To make matters worse, another report recently published by the Hudson Institute asserts that many US air bases lack the hardened protections found in Chinese facilities, leaving them susceptible to missile attacks. For example, China could neutralize US military aircraft and fuel depots at Iwakuni, located on Japan’s main island of Honshu, with just 10 missiles.
While US forces have historically had an advantage in deploying to forward airfields without much resistance in previous conflicts in the Middle East, experts believe a conflict with China would present a very different and much more challenging environment. In such an atmosphere, establishing air superiority would be much more difficult than previously envisioned.
The report states that by 2050, “there will be a general need to distribute and conceal military value so as to be less vulnerable to attack. This will be true in all domains and at all altitudes: space, air, land, sea and underwater. The U.S. trend of relying on increasingly expensive refined systems in small numbers will have to be reversed.”
“The tendency to make major warfighting platforms self-sufficient and lethal and survivable independently will be replaced by the need to disaggregate and link capabilities across multiple systems, which in turn will lead to the development of systems and weapons designed to deny, destroy, or counter disaggregated capabilities.”
Talking about the challenges in establishing air superiority, the report says: “In the face of a pacing challenge, the current concept of warfighting already assumes that, in heavily contested airspace, air superiority can only be achieved episodically through surge operations.”
Source: here
In late 2023 and early 2024, there was a situation of strategic uncertainty about the prospects and duration of Russia’s war against Ukraine and its consequences. This interferes with strategic planning in Ukraine, allied countries and the EU as a whole.
The uncertainty leads to the emergence of ideas and proposals in the information and political space, which not only do not contribute to the victory of the democratic world in the struggle against global totalitarianism, but on the contrary increase the risks.
This is due to the fact that in the modern information world, politicians, experts, journalists, civil society and business personalities are increasingly forced to draw conclusions based not on real facts, but on emotions, impressions and misconceptions that are formed in conditions of an excess of insignificant but noisy or sensational information, or in conditions of information and psychological operations, which are convenient to carry out in conditions of information chaos.
In this context, it is absolutely impossible to use Russian statistics. At least since the beginning of the Great War on February 24, 2022, it has not only ceased to correspond to reality, but has turned into a powerful source of strategic disinformation. It is surprising to us that it is still being used by respected international think tanks and media outlets, which in this way not only contribute to Russian disinformation, but also deliberately put errors in their conclusions and forecasts.
Therefore, wartime decision-making and forecasting requires analytical materials created on the basis of established facts from reliable sources.
In the authors’ understanding of the report, this methodologically means the need to find processes in each domain that fulfill two conditions – a) suitability for adequate physical monitoring, b) relevance to broader conclusions than the actual subject of monitoring.
We have been conducting such monitoring continuously since February 2014, immediately after the Russian occupation of the Crimean peninsula. Their topics vary depending on relevance, availability of information suitable for accounting and analysis, etc.
It should be noted that the authors draw conclusions only on the basis of the results of their own research conducted by the Monitoring Group of the non-governmental organization “Institute of Black Sea Strategic Studies“, i.e. those in which we are fully confident in the methodology, professionalism of the interpreters and the quality of their work.
The main risk factor that determines the duration of Russia’s war against Ukraine is the volume of maritime exports of Russian crude oil and oil products. This will have to be limited in the Baltic Sea and/or the North Sea.
Energy exports account for 55-70% of Russia’s export earnings, depending on world prices. In turn, the export of oil and oil products, and not other components, is the main source of Russia’s foreign exchange earnings. The share of oil in its energy exports is estimated at up to 70%.
As long as it exists in such volumes, the war against Ukraine will continue and will impose huge financial burdens on EU countries.
This risk of the duration of the war and the European countries’ expenditure on supporting Ukraine and strengthening their own security is mainly determined by the volume of maritime exports of crude oil from Russian ports in the Baltic Sea. It accounts for about 60% of Russia’s total maritime oil exports and is physically measured at 10-12 million tons of crude oil per month, transported by 90 to 100 tankers per month.
Therefore, the EU or the coalition of Baltic Sea countries, together with Norway and the UK, will sooner or later be forced to apply restrictive measures against these offshore oil exports, as the geography of the world does not provide other opportunities for this.
In response, Russia will show the highest degree of hysteria and intimidation in any attempt to limit its oil exports to the Baltic Sea. However, it has no real means of response except sabotage.
Therefore, in advance and in parallel with the restriction of Russian maritime oil exports to the Baltic Sea and Northern European countries, including the UK, it is necessary to strengthen anti-sabotage measures, in particular with regard to communications along the Baltic and North Sea seabed, wind farms and other installations on the shelf.
How to reduce Russia’s revenues from maritime exports of crude oil and oil products
The authors of the report represent a team that has been monitoring the movement of seagoing vessels for 15 years, and for the last 2.5 years, as of April 2024, has engaged in daily monitoring of the movement of tankers carrying Russian crude oil and petroleum products.
On the basis of this experience, we argue that it is futile to fight against “Russia’s shadow fleet”. Because it is impossible to fight what does not exist in nature. There is a fleet of tankers transporting Russian crude oil and oil products around the world.
Equally pointless are discussions about the size of the “price ceiling”. Because it never existed and it does not exist.
The mechanism of the so-called “price ceiling” has not worked and does not work, because it does not and cannot have safeguards against falsification of documents on the value of tanker cargo. The conclusion of contracts under the 2022 “price ceiling” is expressly prohibited by decree of the President of the Russian Federation and is strictly controlled.
The public support of this direction in the world media and in expert circles actually serves as a cover for the real circumstances in which 30% of this oil is transported from Russian ports by tankers owned by companies registered in EU countries (mainly in Greece) and up to 10% of this oil is delivered to radra transshipments near the coast of EU countries in the Mediterranean Sea, from where in small shipments with falsified documents it can reach EU countries in violation of the embargo.
The correct formulation of the task is to fight for the reduction of Russian maritime exports of oil and petroleum products as the main external source of financing and duration of Russian aggression against the civilized world.
Energy exports account for significantly more than half of Russia’s export revenues: depending on world prices, its share in 2013-2021, i.e. when it was still possible to use Russian statistics with caution, according to the Center for Global Studies “Strategy XXI”, ranged from 54.3% to 68.8%.
It is important to note that in the structure of revenues from Russian energy exports, the first place is occupied not by revenues from the export of natural gas, but from the export of crude oil and oil products: 71.13% in 2021; the share of revenues from gas exports in that year was only 21.92%, and coal – 6.95%.
Оттжжее, надходженння від експорту сирої нафти та нафтопродуктів є найбільшшим зовнішнім джерелом фінансування військових витрат Россії, в тому числі за за за кокупівлі за кордоном військовової технніки та товарів подвійного призначенння. ТТобто тенденції ексспорту россійської сирої нафти та нафтопродуктів – це один з на найважливіших індикаторів подальшої тривалості війни.
As of April 2024, the Monitoring Group, continuing the “old” monitoring of maritime exports of crude oil and petroleum products from Russian Black Sea ports (carried out since April 2022), started to monitor maritime exports from Russian Baltic Sea ports (for reference, its own monitoring of tankers from the Far East and the Northern Sea Route is carried out).
As a matter of principle, we do not use published monitoring data of foreign think tanks, as we have ensured in practice that their methodology does not take into account warfare conditions, i.e., the use of electronic warfare equipment by the Russian Federation and/or physical interference with the operation of automated ship monitoring systems.
This leads to a significant distortion – up to 30% – of the information received by the software and published.
Statistical basis for planning
1. Russian Federation seaborne crude oil export volumes in September 2024 (all tables below according to our own monitoring). Table.1
Поррти РФ
DWT танкерів, т
%
Baltic Sea
11 628 374
59,02
Far East
4 496 847
22,82
Black Sea
3 462 318
17,57
North
113 905
0,58
TOTAL
19 701 444
100,00
It is clear that neither Ukraine nor its allies have opportunities to influence transportation in the North and the Far East.
But this is not significant, since oil exports from two seas – the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea – account for about 80% of Russia’s total seaborne exports of oil and petroleum products (see Table 1).
At the same time, the most important in terms of volumes and the most favorable in terms of political and geographical conditions for action planning is, of course, the Baltic Sea (60% of maritime crude oil exports).
All these tankers are included in the databases (lists) published regularly on our website in the Bloody Oil section. *)
* При цьому по кожному судну вказуються: Name / IMO / DWT / Flag / Year of construction / Port of departure / Actual time of departure / Port of destination / Estimated or actual time of arrival / Registered owner / Ship manager / Commercial manager
On average, 310 to 350 tankers operate from Baltic and Black Sea ports per month, 120 to 140 of them carry crude oil, 190 to 210 tankers carry oil products.
Taking into account repeated (cyclic) voyages, it is possible to estimate the total number of tankers carrying Russian crude oil and oil products from the Baltic and Black Sea ports in the last 6 months at 900-1000 ships (of which about 300-400 crude oil tankers – Ship type Crude oil tanker). An accurate list without repetitions can be prepared promptly, if necessary, from the available monthly lists.
3. Export volumes of crude oil and petroleum products from Baltic and Black Sea ports (excluding LNG) in April-September 2024. Table 3
The total monthly volume of crude oil exports from Baltic and Black Sea ports is about 14-16 million tons. The ratio of crude oil exports from Black Sea ports to Baltic Sea ports is about 1:3.
The total monthly volume of oil product exports from the Baltic and Black Sea ports is about 6-7 million tons. The ratio of exports of petroleum products from Black Sea ports to Baltic Sea ports is approximately 1:1
4. Analysis of Russian crude oil carriers from Baltic Sea ports in May and September 2024 based on country of registration of shipowner and/or ship manager (registered owner / ship manager / commercial manager). Table 4
The distribution of the Russian crude oil transportation market in Baltic Sea ports has not changed much in six months.
Over 30% of the transportation is carried by tankers of Greek shipowners.
Together with tankers registered in Cyprus and the EU candidate country Moldova, 34.2% of the tanker market is held by companies from EU+ countries.
The share of tankers registered in “flag of convenience countries” (offshore countries, FOC countries), i.e. where the real tanker owners can be truly hidden, is only 10-12%.
5. Analysis of Russian crude oil carriers in Baltic Sea ports in September 2024 based on technical condition and age of tankers. Table 5
The theories spread in the world media about the critical age of the tanker fleet and, consequently, its poor technical condition do not correspond to reality. The average age of 99 tankers carrying Russian crude oil from Baltic Sea ports in September 2024 is 15.7 years, which is not a critical indicator.
It should be noted that the thesis that tankers older than 15 years are “old tankers in poor technical condition” is unprofessional from the point of view of shipping practice. In fact, in world practice, much older ships can be in normal technical condition.
The main criterion for the technical condition of an oil tanker is its presence or absence in the “white lists”, “black lists” or “gray lists ” of international port control memoranda (Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control) – Tokyo MOU, Paris, etc.
In September 2024, out of 99 tankers carrying Russian crude oil from Baltic Sea ports, only 28 (i.e. 28.3%) are on the “blacklists ” of international port control memoranda, i.e. they have serious problems with their technical condition.
As of September 2024, out of 99 tankers carrying Russian crude oil from Baltic Sea ports, only 37 (i.e. 37.4%) are on the “gray lists ” of international port control memoranda, i.e. they have some problems with their technical condition that can be removed.
The largest number of tankers on the “black lists” belong to owners from FOC countries – 8 out of 9; Azerbaijan – 6 out of 6; India – 4 out of 8.
Of the 17 oil tankers owned by owners from the Russian Federation (UAE), only 3 are blacklisted by port control memoranda. The largest “network” of carriers (Greece – all 29 tankers) has no problems with technical condition.
As of September 2024, 99 tankers transported crude oil. 45 of these, i.e. 45.5% or almost half have P&I insurance policies. The rest is with insurance companies in India, China etc.
Thus, the information disseminated in the media about the “vast majority of uninsured tankers” is exaggerated.
If crude oil and oil products were transported from Baltic and Black Sea ports in April-September 2024 (Tables 6 and 7)
Analysis of Russian carriers of crude oil from the Baltic Sea ports in September 2024 on insurance basis. Table 6
Our monitoring statistics undeniably show that a significant amount of Russian crude oil and petroleum products from the Baltic and Black Sea ports reach the radra transshipments off the coasts of EU countries and sometimes even directly into EU ports, in direct violation of the embargo.
In just 6 months (April-September) of 2024, about 6.2 million tons of crude oil (7.1% of total volumes) and 6.5 million tons of oil products (16.6% of total volumes) were delivered to the radra transhipments and directly to several ports in EU countries.
Practical steps to reduce shipping volumes of Russian crude oil and petroleum products
Step 1EU (or a coalition of EU and NATO member states located on the shores of the Baltic and Black Seas) should declare a “special period” regarding the application and/or suspension of certain rules of international maritime law and international agreements on freedom of navigation, freedom of passage and transit, etc., until the end of Russian aggression.
Since the international law of the sea, in particular the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, is de facto a “peacetime law”, it is impossible to influence these processes within its framework. Therefore, measures to be developed should be based on the principle of a ‘special period’, during which partner countries and allies could formally introduce actions and measures that may not fully comply with the legal norms of the maritime ‘law of the peacetime law’.
The EU should categorically ban all shipowners from EU countries from transporting Russian oil and oil products from Russian ports.
This will rapidly reduce the corresponding volumes by 30% and create a shortage of tanker fleet for the Russian Federation for a period of time.
Step 3 The EU should strengthen and unequivocally strengthen the wording of the sanctions regime with regard to the categorical ban imposed on all ports of EU countries to accept tankers and oil products that have been loaded on board during the transhipment of radra.
This will allow us to quickly reduce the volume of Russian oil and oil products entering EU countries that violate the embargo by another 10%.
There are several such areas:(2) – off the northern coast of Morocco in the Mediterranean Sea,1 – south of the Bay of Laconia, near the island of Kýthira (Greece), – EU1 – south of the island of Chios (Greece) – EU1 – south of the island of Lesbos (Greece) – EU1 – off the coast of Malta – EU1 – at the entrance to the Suez Strait,1 – near the Israeli port of Haifa
Stage 4EU (or a coalition of EU and NATO member states located on the shores of the Baltic Sea) should quickly include in the sanctions lists ALL tankers that have been registered in the last 6 months carrying Russian crude oil and oil products.
These sanctions should ban the use not only of territorial sea, ports, anchorages, but also pilotage and other maritime services in EU countries.
The EU (or at least a coalition of EU and NATO member states located on the shores of the Baltic Sea) should temporarily introduce compulsory pilotage in the Danish Strait, which connects the Baltic Sea and the North Sea.
Prohibiting the use of pilotage and other maritime services for sanctioned ships will create a reliable lock on the only route from Russian Baltic ports to “blood oil” tankers.
Step 6 In conjunction with the elaboration of these proposals, expert discussions should be held with experts on the possible impact of these measures on world oil prices, as well as measures to offset the Russian Federation’s countermeasures to unwind the spiral in world prices.
Forecast some of the security risks to Europe in late 2024 – early 2025. Part 3
The difficulty of restricting Russian oil exports from the Baltic Sea will be exacerbated by Russia’s strategy of playing a geopolitical game to drive up global oil prices.
According to our observations, Russia has already started to take steps to increase global oil prices, as the downward trend is categorically unacceptable for a state waging an aggressive war.
In August 2024, we did not record a single tanker leaving Russian ports in the Baltic Sea and heading east around Africa, bypassing the route through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, but in September there were 7 such cases, and in October already 13.
This is synchronized with the first reports in the world media in September 2024 of Russia’s possible transfer of anti-ship missiles to Houthi extremists to fire on ships in the Red Sea.
Note that the route to India, Singapore or China around Africa, in order not to go through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, is 12-14 days longer and consequently much more expensive (the list of tankers that have chosen such a route is attached with an indication of the shipowners).
So, we predict that the Houthi partners of the Russian aggressors have been tasked to carry out a powerful series of attacks on Red Sea tankers at the right time to create panic on the stock markets and to drive up world oil prices.
The emergence and increase in the number of voyages on the route around Africa for tankers going to India, Singapore, China from Russian ports in the Baltic Sea are caused by the leak of information about these intentions to “friendly” shipowners.
There is another opportunity for the Russian game to raise oil prices. Two separate streams of crude oil are exported from Russian Black Sea ports: Russian crude oil from the ports of Novorossiysk, Taman, Tuapse and the roadstead near the Kerci Strait (this oil is subject to the EU-G7 embargo) (2) Kazakh crude oil of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) – from a special terminal in the port of Novorossiysk. This oil is not subject to sanctions. It reaches the tankers from a separate terminal via 3 (three) special remote berthing devices – these are special structures, buoy-buoys, which are located at sea and allow tankers to be loaded at a considerable distance from the shore.
After the embargo on Russian crude oil, EU countries replaced Russian crude oil in Black Sea ports with Kazakh CPC Black Sea oil in their oil imports (this is shown in the diagrams below).
Diagram 1. Total export of Russian crude oil from Black Sea seaports in 2022-2024, t
At the same time, EU countries import almost the entire volume of Kazakh CPC oil (according to monitoring, in September 2024, 94.9% of CPC oil was exported to EU countries).
Diagram 2. Volume of crude oil exports from Black Sea seaports in 2022-2024, t
This creates opportunities for the Russian Federation, at any politically convenient period, under specially created artificial pretexts (e.g. weather conditions, technical malfunctions, requirements of the Russian Federation’s environmental services or Russian Federation court decisions) to suspend for any period or completely stop the export of Kazakh oil to the EU. Russia has already demonstratively taken such actions in March and July 2022.
For the duration of the EU embargo on Russian seafood imports, i.e. from December 2022, the volumes of Kazakh CPC oil imported by EU countries from the Black Sea (up to and including September 2024) amounted to about 99.6 million tons, an average of 4.5 million tons per month, according to our monitoring.
The main importers of this oil, and therefore the countries that could face the biggest problems if this forecast comes true, are the EU countries, which import almost the entire volume. These are Italy (the largest importer of CPC oil from the Black Sea – 45% in September 2024), as well as the Netherlands, Greece, France, Spain (with a share of 10-15%).
Therefore, it is desirable to take measures to limit the volume of Russia’s seaborne oil exports gradually and in coordination with partners, such as the United States and other countries that intend to increase the share of their energy carriers on the world market.
In addition, our recommendation to EU countries is that, in the context of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and Ukrainian resistance, which will not tend to diminish, it is desirable to get rid of such imported energy flows passing through war zones. In this respect, Kazakhstan’s intentions to redirect a significant part of its oil to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan route are timely, but will face resistance from Russia.
Source: here