Eyeing China, Rubio makes Central America his first trip as top US diplomat
Igor Patrick in Washington and Mark Magnier in New York Published: 2:11am, 1 Feb 2025 US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will make his first international trip since taking office on Saturday, visiting five Central American countries – a first in more than a century for a top American diplomat's inaugural tour – as Washington moves to counter China's deepening influence in the region. Rubio will travel through Thursday to Panama , El Salvador , Costa Rica , Guatemala and the Dominican Republic and meet senior officials and business leaders to 'promote regional cooperation', according to the State Department.
Rubio would also discuss 'shared interests' like curbing irregular migration, transnational crime, 'countering China and deepening economic partnerships to enhance prosperity in our hemisphere', it added. State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters on Friday that the choice of destinations may raise eyebrows, given Washington 'tends to look' to Europe and Asia.
In explaining Rubio's renewed focus on the region, Bruce cited the impact of decisions made by countries in the Americas on US domestic politics.
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Asia Times
5 hours ago
- Asia Times
Netanyahu's Iran strike is a well-laid trap for Trump
On the morning of June 13, 2025, explosions rang out over Tehran, shattering the fragile calm of the Islamic world's sacred day of prayer. The targets were reportedly Iranian military and nuclear infrastructure. And unlike past episodes of strategic ambiguity, this operation was not denied. It was explicitly approved by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Within hours, Iran responded. Drones were launched in swift retaliation, hitting sites believed to be affiliated with Israeli-linked interests in the region. This cycle of provocation and reprisal is not new in the Middle East. But what makes this moment different is its timing, its international implications and the risk it now poses to the United States and global stability. Just months earlier, US President Donald Trump, newly returned to office, sharply rebuked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump criticized Zelensky's refusal to negotiate with Russia as the root of prolonged conflict in Europe, warning that Kyiv's obstinacy could bring the world closer to World War III. Yet it is not Ukraine that has ignited a new regional firestorm. It is Netanyahu—an American ally—who has taken a unilateral military step that may now entangle Washington in a conflict it did not start and cannot control. The irony is sharp. Netanyahu's strike, reportedly conducted without prior coordination with the United States, which may or may not be true, comes at a time when the Biden and Trump administrations alike have signaled exhaustion with Middle Eastern entanglements. After two decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the American public's appetite for intervention is low. And yet, because of this one decision by an allied leader, the US may now find itself on the edge of another vortex—and one far more volatile than Ukraine. Iran's immediate retaliation should not have come as a surprise. Striking Tehran on a Friday—a day of spiritual unity for over a billion Muslims—was more than a military decision. It was a symbolic act, almost certain to provoke a visceral national and religious response. Iran's drones arrived by sunset. More will undoubtedly follow in the days ahead. Tehran has already warned it will consider American bases in Iraq, Syria, Qatar and Bahrain fair game, given what it perceives as US complicity with Israel. This is the trap. When allies act alone—especially in regions as fragile as the Middle East—they can implicate their partners in unintended wars. The United States did not overtly authorize this strike. But as long as it is seen as Israel's protector and arms supplier, it becomes vulnerable to the fallout. Washington's silence and obfuscation in the face of Netanyahu's recklessness risks being interpreted as consent. And in geopolitics, perception is reality. The consequences are already materializing. Brent crude oil jumped more than 10% by midday Kuala Lumpur time, with analysts warning of further volatility if the confrontation widens. For Southeast Asia, this matters deeply. Countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines—net oil importers—will face immediate inflationary pressure. Supply chains already under strain from Trump's renewed tariff regimes could buckle further. Capital markets, long wary of Middle East shocks, are on edge. This was not inevitable. Over the past year, there had been slow but promising progress in diplomatic engagement across civilizations. The ASEAN-GCC-China Summit marked one such effort—bringing together key actors from Southeast Asia, the Arab Gulf, and East Asia to focus on economic cooperation, cultural exchange, and regional connectivity. These efforts were never intended to replace hard power, but rather to soften its edges through dialogue. Netanyahu's pre-emptive strike threatens to undo that fragile momentum. Civilizational diplomacy cannot flourish amid a hail of missiles. Trust is harder to rebuild than it is to destroy. Domestically, Netanyahu may believe this operation strengthens his hand. He has long been politically embattled—dogged by corruption trials, mass protests and coalition pressures from ultranationalist partners. By launching a strike on Iran, he may hope to rally his base, distract from domestic dissent and portray himself as Israel's last line of defense. But this is a dangerous gamble. If Iran's retaliation expands or becomes more lethal, Israel's internal divisions may deepen. The trauma of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks has not healed. And polls in Israel suggest growing frustration with Netanyahu's leadership and the direction of the state. His attempt to appear strong could ultimately backfire. For Trump, this moment is equally precarious. He came back to office promising peace through strength, but without more wars. If US forces are attacked in the coming days—as Iran has threatened—he will be forced to choose between military response and political restraint. Either choice risks undercutting his narrative. What this moment demands is urgent diplomacy. The United States, with partners like Turkey, Qatar and even neutral European states, must reestablish backchannels to Tehran. Israel must be counseled—firmly—that escalation does not serve anyone's strategic interest, least of all its own. Iran, for its part, must understand that disproportionate retaliation could fracture what limited international sympathy it retains. There is still time to contain this crisis. But it requires clarity from Washington. Silence will only widen the misunderstanding. If Trump wants to avoid being dragged into another Middle Eastern war, he must make it clear—publicly—that the United States did not support this strike, and that any attack on US interests will be met with a proportional, not automatic, response. Great powers are often judged not by how they start wars, but by how they prevent them. Netanyahu's strike has lit the fuse. It is now up to others to make sure the fire doesn't reach the powder keg. The world is watching—not just Tehran and Tel Aviv, but Washington, Riyadh, Doha and Kuala Lumpur too. When allies act alone, the costs are never theirs alone.
Asia Times
8 hours ago
- Asia Times
How social media divided and broke America
'Something there is that doesn't love a wall' — Robert Frost I still stick to my prediction that American society is slowly calming down from the unrest of 2014-2021. But as new rounds of protests erupt across the nation and a senator is wrestled to the ground and masked unidentified government agents rampage through workplaces and communities looking for 'illegals' to arrest, it's worth remembering that the decline of unrest can be very slow and bumpy. Thus it was in the 1970s, and thus it is today. But why is American society so unsettled in the first place? Something clearly broke in our society in the early 2010s. Watching TV or reading books from before that time feels like looking at a fresco or a mosaic of a vanished golden age — a country that had its problems and disagreements, but which basically worked. A country that almost no one seemed to doubt was a country, and should be one. What broke that healthy nation? In a post last year, I argued that a perfect storm of events — the housing crash and Great Recession, the rise of China, racial diversification, and the rise of smartphone-enabled social media — all came crashing down on America at the same time. I think that story is right, but I don't think it explains why America was especially vulnerable. Many other countries suffered from the global financial crisis, faced the rise of China, experienced tensions over immigration, and struggled with the introduction of social media. To give just one example, you can see a lot of the effects of smartphones — on attention spans and learning, depression, suicide, etc — in other countries, not just the US. And yet the US seems to have been uniquely wounded by the last decade and a half. Where other rich countries have mostly resisted the rise of authoritarian, demagogic leaders, the US is stuck with Trump. American culture wars seem particularly pernicious and intractable. And America has suffered a particularly severe decline in the degree to which people trust institutions: Source: FT In fact, Americans are just down in the dumps about their country in general, and have been so for some time: Source: Gallup (Other polls find the same.) This is especially odd in light of the fact that America's economy is doing so remarkably well compared to other rich countries. Wealth is up above where it was before the Great Recession, the middle class is economically healthy and thriving, wages are rising steadily, and America's macroeconomic performance has been very solid. The US economy is an incredibly resilient machine — if you want a reason for optimism, look at how the economy has thrown off every shock and headwind that the world could throw at it. And yet consumer sentiment is in the dumps. And if you tell people the economy is good, they'll get mad at you. I believe those low sentiment numbers, and I believe in that anger, but I don't see how it can be the real economy causing them. Instead, I suspect that Americans are projecting their anger at their institutions — and at each other — onto economic issues. The introduction of the smartphone — and especially, social media on the smartphone — seems to have something to do with it. These technologies became ubiquitous in the 2010s: Not all of the problems in American society line up nicely with the introduction of smartphone-enabled social media. Severe political polarization began earlier, probably in the 2000s as a result of the Iraq War. Satisfaction with the direction of the country fell at about the same time. But the fall in institutional trust, and the rise in mental illness and unhappiness, line up well with the rise of the smartphone. Back in 2023, Erik Hoel had an excellent post listing a bunch of things about America that got worse right around the time that everyone got Facebook and Twitter and Instagram on their phones: Many of the trends Hoel notes are tangential to the point I'm making here. But here's one worth highlighting: Source: Zach Goldberg By any objective standard, workplace sexism had been decreasing in America since 1980. But in the early 2010s — years before the MeToo movement — perceptions of sex discrimination among liberal women spiked. There's a somewhat similar trend with race relations. Perceptions of race relations had been broadly positive until around 2013, at which point they turned sharply negative: Source: Gallup Unlike many of the other trends, we know why this happened. It wasn't the election of Obama or the election of Trump — the decline happened in 2014-15. That's when a bunch of videos of police shooting Black people came out, causing nationwide protests and a general national furor over racism. The shootings were the proximate cause of the explosion of racial anger in America, but it wouldn't have been possible without social media. Police shootings and abuses happened plenty of times in America before 2014, and protesters got mad about them. But because people didn't have the ability to take smartphone videos and broadcast them all over the world at the speed of light, and because apps didn't give people a social incentive to share those videos and get mad about them, they didn't have the impact they did until 2014. Racial tensions are one example where we can easily trace the effect of smartphone-enabled social media on American social divisions. But in general I think you'll find this same pattern for almost every major cultural issue and every indicator of social division — as soon as Americans got smartphones and social media, we started trusting each other less and getting angrier at each other. Why? Part of it, certainly, is just the natural tendency of social media — particularly 'dunk apps' like Twitter and Bluesky — to elevate the worst people in society and give them a bullhorn to rile up and attack everyone else. But this doesn't explain why American society suffered worse than other countries. Perhaps our greater racial diversity created more fault lines for social media to exploit, but this doesn't explain non-racial fault lines like gender; we have the same balance of men and women as every other country. I don't think we know the answer yet. But I do have a hypothesis. I think that more than other nations, America uniquely relied on geographic sorting to deal with its diversity. In 2008, Bill Bishop wrote a book called 'The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded Americans is Tearing Us Apart.' He showed that liberal and conservative Americans were moving to different cities and different states. Bishop worried that this geographic sorting would create ideological echo chambers, where liberals and conservatives each became more extreme because they only talked to each other. Perhaps that did happen, but I also suspect that geographic sorting acted as a sort of release valve for the social tensions that built up in the United States after the turbulent 1960s and 1970s. Instead of constantly feuding with their conservative neighbors about abortion or gay marriage or Ronald Reagan, liberals could just move — to San Francisco or New York or L.A. if they had money, or to Oregon or Vermont or Colorado if they didn't. There, they would never have to talk to anyone who loved Reagan or thought homosexuality was a sin. Albert Hirschman wrote that everyone has three options to deal with features of their society that they don't like. You can do nothing and simply endure ('loyalty'), you can fight to change things ('voice'), or you can leave and go somewhere else ('exit'). The ructions of the 60s and 70s were a form of 'voice', but riots and protests and constant arguments about Watergate were no fun. Because Americans had cars and money, many of them could take a more attractive option: exit. In the red-blue America that emerged after the 60s, Blue Americans could move to blue states and blue cities, and Red Americans could do the opposite. Back in the 1990s and 2000s, this became a cliche. If you complained about politics in your state, people would tell you 'Go move to California, hippie!' or 'Go move to Texas, redneck!'. It was a joke, but lots of people did exactly that. It wasn't just red states and blue states, either. The sorting was along urban-rural and educational lines as well. As America converted from a manufacturing-intensive economy to one based on knowledge industries like IT, finance, pharma, and entertainment, those industries clustered in 'superstar' cities like NYC, SF, L.A., D.C., etc. And at the same time, education polarization was happening in the US — educated Americans were becoming liberals while less-educated Americans were becoming conservative. Source: The Economist This trend existed in other countries, but not to the same degree. America's hard pivot to being the world's research park paid big dividends in terms of GDP, but produced some new social divisions in the bargain. By the 2010s, if you looked at a detailed electoral map of the US, what you saw wasn't really red states and blue states — it was red countryside and blue cities. The cities were more prosperous than the countryside, which led to the GOP becoming the party of the working class and the Democrats becoming the party of the affluent. But although we worried about political bubbles, this system seemed to work just fine. A hippie in Oakland and a redneck in the suburbs of Houston both fundamentally felt that they were part of the same unified nation; that nation looked very different to people in each place. Californians thought America was California, and Texans thought America was Texas, and this generally allowed America to function. In fact, there's some research showing that bubbles actually reduce polarization. Bail et al. (2018) found that when people are forcibly exposed to opposing views, they become more polarized against those views: We surveyed a large sample of Democrats and Republicans who visit Twitter at least three times each week about a range of social policy issues. One week later, we randomly assigned respondents to…follow a Twitter bot for 1 month that exposed them to messages from those with opposing political ideologies (e.g., elected officials, opinion leaders, media organizations, and nonprofit groups)…We find that Republicans who followed a liberal Twitter bot became substantially more conservative…Democrats exhibited slight increases in liberal attitudes after following a conservative Twitter bot, although these effects are not statistically significant. Red America and Blue America became echo chambers that helped to contain America's rising cultural and social polarization. They helped us live with our ideological diversity, by forgetting — except during presidential elections — that the people who disagreed with us still existed. It was a big country. We could spread out, there was room for everyone. As the man says in Robert Frost's poem: 'Good fences make good neighbors.' And then that all came crashing down. In the 2010s, everyone got a smartphone, and everyone got social media on that smartphone, and everyone started checking that social media many times a day. Twitter was a dedicated universal chat app where everyone could discuss public affairs with everyone else in one big scrum; for a few years, Facebook structured its main feed so that everyone could see their friends and family posting political links and commentary. Like some kind of forcible hive mind out of science fiction, social media suddenly threw every American in one small room with every other American.1 Decades of hard work spent running away from each other and creating our ideologically fragmented patchwork of geographies went up in smoke overnight, as geography suddenly ceased to mediate the everyday discussion of politics and culture. The sudden collapse of geographic sorting in political discussion threw all Americans in the same room with each other — and like the characters in Sartre's ' No Exit', they discovered that 'Hell is other people.' Conservatives suddenly discovered that a lot of Americans despise Christianity or resent White people over the legacy of discrimination. Liberals suddenly remembered that a lot of their countrymen frown on their lifestyles. Every progressive college kid got to see every piece of right-wing fake news that their grandparents were sharing on Facebook (whereas before, these would have been quietly confined to chain emails). Every conservative in a small town got to see Twitter activists denouncing White people. And so on. This was hard on everyone, but perhaps it was hardest on educated liberals, who had used the knowledge industry clusters of superstar cities as a lifeline to escape the conservative towns they grew up in. Many liberals became intensely unhappy in the smartphone age: Source: Zach Goldberg And I think young liberal women in particular bore the brunt: Source: Pew via Jonathan Haidt Social media made exit impossible, and so Americans abruptly went back to voice. Thrown into one small room with each other, they began to complain and fight. And despite Facebook's turn away from political feeds and Twitter's fragmentation, Americans still spend much of their waking life online and get most of their political news there. No physical-world geographic sorting can solve this. People still move to Texas to escape California's progressive culture, but the people who move are all still on the same apps. Driving immigrants out of the US wouldn't even remove them from English-language conversational networks; they'd be right there yelling in conservatives' faces from other countries. America's unique strengths were always its size and its freedom; it was a great big country, and everyone could spread out and do their own thing and find their people. Social media collapsed that great big country into a small town — or a handful of small towns — full of busybodies and scolds and disreputable characters and people who disagree with each other's values. And we haven't yet learned how to deal with that. 1 And with foreigners, too. Because English is more or less a universal language, extremists and agitators from every country on the planet are now able to jump into American social media discussions. In fact, a number of prominent political influencers are openly tweeting from foreign lands. But this is dwarfed by the number of foreign people who simply tweet pseudonymously, and whom Americans probably assume are other Americans. This is a problem in and of itself, because it distorts American political discourse; Americans' idea of 'what everyone thinks' is heavily influenced by what foreigners think. That's fine for dealing with global issues, but it can heavily distort our perceptions of what our fellow countrymen want. This article was first published on Noah Smith's Noahpinion Substack and is republished with kind permission. Become a Noahopinion subscriber here.
Asia Times
a day ago
- Asia Times
Secret US agenda behind India-Pakistan ceasefire
The recent revelation aired by Pakistani security analyst Imtiaz Gul renewed attention to the Nur Khan air base near Islamabad. Gul alleges that this strategically significant facility is under de facto American operational control through a covert arrangement, with US aircraft regularly landing and taking off amid limited transparency. He further claims that even senior Pakistani military officials are restricted from accessing certain operations at the base. These assertions have gained traction in the aftermath of India's Operation Sindoor, which targeted terrorist sites and strategic military infrastructure in Pakistan, including the Nur Khan air base. The incident has reignited concerns over Pakistan's sovereignty, the extent and nature of America's military presence and Islamabad's evolving strategic alignments in the region. Noor Khan air base holds immense strategic value due to its location near Islamabad and Rawalpindi—Pakistan's political and military command hubs. Situated close to the Pakistan Army's General Headquarters (GHQ) and the Strategic Plans Division, which manages the country's nuclear arsenal, the base serves as the core command for Pakistan's air mobility operations. It houses key transport squadrons, including C-130s and CN-235s, and supports VVIP and strategic airlift missions. Its significance is further underscored by the regular presence of US military aircraft, particularly C-17 Globemasters and special operations units. Reports indicate that certain sections of the base may be designated for exclusive US use, with limited access even for senior Pakistani officials. This consistent American footprint, combined with restricted oversight, lends credibility to Gul's assertion that the air base could be operating under US oversight for select classified missions. The Noor Khan air base reportedly became a flashpoint during India's precision strike in Operation Sindoor, an event that dramatically escalated tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad. Just hours before the strike, US Vice President J.D. Vance, in an interview with Fox News on May 9, 2025, publicly distanced Washington from the crisis, stating: 'We're not going to get involved in the middle of a war that's fundamentally none of our business, and has nothing to do with America's ability to control it.' However, following India's targeting of the strategically sensitive Noor Khan air base, the United States acted swiftly behind the scenes to contain the fallout. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and senior US officials activated emergency diplomatic channels aimed at defusing the crisis. However, the ceasefire that eventually took hold occurred only after Pakistan's Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) directly contacted his Indian counterpart, prompting a mutual agreement to halt further escalation. This sequence of events, marked by Washington's initial public detachment and subsequent quiet intervention, likely underscores the concealed strategic importance the US attaches to military assets like Noor Khan air base. Pakistan's readiness to grant the United States access to its military bases is deeply rooted in a decades-long tradition of strategic cooperation. During the Cold War, Pakistan permitted the US to conduct U-2 reconnaissance missions from Peshawar's Badaber Airbase in 1958. This partnership deepened significantly during the War on Terror, when critical facilities—such as Shamsi, Shahbaz, Dalbandin, and Nur Khan air base—were used by US forces for drone strikes, intelligence gathering and logistical operations in Afghanistan. While less overt today, this military collaboration continues in more discreet and sophisticated forms. A strong indicator of sustained US strategic engagement is the consistent flow of financial and multilateral support to Pakistan—even during times of heightened geopolitical tension. In May 2025, amid escalating conflict with India following Operation Sindoor, Pakistan secured a crucial US$1 billion disbursement from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under its $7 billion Extended Fund Facility. The release, widely believed to have been facilitated by US influence, was met with disapproval in India due to its timing during active hostilities, reinforcing the perception in New Delhi about Washington's long-standing geostrategic interests in Pakistan. Since 1958, Pakistan has received 24 IMF loan packages totaling around $34 billion, including a $1.3 billion tranche earlier in March 2025. At the same time, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) approved an $800 million assistance package—comprising a $300 million program-based loan and a $500 million policy-based loan. This support came in addition to previous climate resilience financing, including a $500 million CDREP loan. Despite Indian concerns about potential military diversion of the funds, these disbursements proceeded, signaling strong external backing. Furthermore, continuous US support for the maintenance and upgrade of Pakistan's F-16 fighter fleet continues to reflect a long-standing defense partnership between Rawalpindi and the Pentagon. Despite its withdrawal from Afghanistan, the US continues to view Pakistan as a vital component of its broader regional strategy. Facilities like Noor Khan air base—and possibly others—are believed to serve as forward-operating locations for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. These bases may also be positioned for potential pre-emptive strikes targeting Iranian nuclear sites or remnants of transnational terrorist groups such as the Islamic State–Khorasan Province (ISKP). Another key driver of US engagement is the strategic aim of preventing Pakistan from falling fully into China's orbit. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship project of Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative, includes major infrastructure investments—such as highways, ports, and energy facilities—many of which have potential dual-use military applications. It is likely that US ISR capabilities are actively monitoring these developments from strategic locations such as Noor Khan air base. China's strategic partnership with Pakistan—embodied by flagship initiatives like the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and the prospective transfer of advanced platforms such as the J-35 fifth-generation stealth fighter jets—is driven primarily by Beijing's desire to counterbalance India's growing influence in South Asia. Chinese diplomatic and military support is not anchored in Pakistan's intrinsic value but in its instrumental role as a strategic bulwark against India. Yet, Beijing must tread carefully. The Pakistani military establishment has a well-documented history of hedging and duplicity in its external alignments. During the War on Terror, Pakistan secured billions in US assistance while simultaneously harboring elements of the Taliban and Haqqani terror network. Today, the same military apparatus may be covertly cooperating with US strategic objectives—potentially to the detriment of Chinese interests. For Beijing, these developments underscore the need to recognize the transactional instincts of Pakistan's military elite, who are adept at balancing rival patrons in pursuit of regime security and institutional gains. Even China's great strategist, Sun Tzu, might have cautioned against overreliance on such a volatile ally The continued US support for Pakistan—evident in sustained financial aid, favorable IMF policies and recent symbolic gestures such as inviting Pakistan's Army chief General Asim Munir to the 250th US Army Day celebrations in Washington—reinforces the perception of the long-standing transactional defense ties between Rawalpindi and the Pentagon. This support from the US strategic establishment remains strong despite Islamabad's role in fostering regional instability. Notably, Pakistan's 2025–26 federal budget included a nearly 20% increase in defense spending, raising the allocation to approximately 2.55 trillion rupees (~$9 billion), even as overall public expenditure was reduced by 7%. Analysts argue that such a move would not have been possible without continued external backing—particularly from the US—through financial assistance and favorable multilateral mechanisms, including IMF disbursements. For China, the lesson is clear: its strategic investment in Pakistan is conditional and instrumental. The possibility of betrayal exists, especially when dealing with a military establishment that has historically prioritized survival and advantage over ideological loyalty. The Noor Khan air base, in this context, is not just a military asset—it is a symbol of Pakistan's enduring relevance to US strategy and a warning sign for Beijing. Idress Aftab is a research analyst at the New Delhi-based Centre for Foreign Policy Research.
