Stirred but not shaken
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Stirred but not shaken
David Goldman analyzes muted market reaction to the Trump administration's recent tariff threats, arguing that fears of financial chaos were overblown. Chinese markets showed little volatility, indicating that its limited trade reliance on the US insulates it from economic disruption.
Trump losing patience as Russia-Ukraine efforts falter
James Davis analyzes the faltering US-led peace efforts in the Russia-Ukraine war. Putin's messaging portrays Ukraine as the peace obstacle, while Washington's disjointed diplomatic apparatus struggles to manage negotiations as Russian forces advance steadily.
Japan builds alliances with Vietnam and the Philippines
Scott Foster analyzes Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba's diplomatic tour of Vietnam and the Philippines, highlighting Japan's growing strategic role in Southeast Asia amid intensifying US-China trade tensions. The visits underscore Tokyo's emergence as a key counterbalance to Beijing.
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Asia Times
an hour ago
- Asia Times
Hot race for Pacific's deep sea mineral wealth
The seabed is legally designated as the 'common heritage of mankind,' but in practice, it has become a hotly contested frontier. This is exemplified by the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), a vast expanse of international seabed located between Hawaii and Mexico rich in polymetallic nodules that contain critical minerals such as nickel, cobalt, copper, and manganese. These resources are more than mere commodities; they are vital components of national strategies for energy independence, technological leadership and strategic deterrence. Unlike land-based domains, where national borders delineate access, the seabed remains governed by a patchwork of international conventions and non-binding regulatory frameworks. This legal ambiguity, combined with the CCZ's sheer scale (approximately 4.5 million square kilometers), recasts geography as a determinant of power. Here, the terrain imposes its own rules: no nation can claim legal sovereignty, yet every technologically capable actor can exert functional control. The strategic function of the seabed lies not in symbolic possession, requiring engagement with multilateral bodies like the International Seabed Authority (ISA), but in continuous operational oversight enforced through submersibles, dredging platforms and state-backed maritime infrastructure. Through these instruments, nations could transform the legal status of the seabed from a global commons into de facto geopolitical claims, not to share, not to protect, but to secure. No rivalry illustrates the emerging dynamics of seabed geopolitics more vividly than that between the United States and China. These two powers approach deep-sea mining from fundamentally different institutional positions, strategic cultures and timelines. China, with its disciplined alignment of state power and long-term industrial planning, has embedded itself within ISA's multilateral framework. It holds more seabed exploration licenses than any other country and has cultivated influence within ISA rulemaking bodies. Chinese actors do not rely on rhetorical commitments to international law; instead, they utilize procedural participation as a mechanism to steer the outcome of regulatory frameworks. Their objective is clear: to shape the rules before they are finalized, ensuring that China's technological, legal and operational advantages are permanently encoded into the structure of global seabed governance. The US, in contrast, approaches the seabed from a structurally distinct position. Excluded from ISA by virtue of not ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the US has pivoted to a strategy of unilateralism, issuing domestic legal authorizations and executive directives to fast-track seabed mining. This approach reflects a response to structural vulnerability, namely, dependence on adversarial supply chains for critical minerals. Where China exerts slow, cumulative influence through institutional immersion, the US acts with urgency, deploying private capital and regulatory agility to compensate for its formal absence from multilateral governance. This creates a bifurcated architecture: China seeks to control the framework, while the US seeks to operate around it. Yet the underlying motive is the same: strategic insulation from resource dependence and competitive positioning in a rapidly hardening world order. Neither strategy is inherently more subversive, but each perceives the other as destabilizing. Thus, the arena of deep-sea governance becomes not a neutral venue for coordination but a contested space where procedural legitimacy and strategic autonomy collide. The Clarion-Clipperton Zone spans an area nearly equivalent to the contiguous US, lying beneath international waters between Hawaii and Mexico. It is home to the planet's richest known reserves of polymetallic nodules, mineral formations laden with cobalt, nickel, and manganese. What makes this zone strategic is not its legal status but its vast, flat and sediment-stable characteristics. It is ideally suited for industrial-scale extraction. The CCZ is administered by ISA, which has parceled the zone into discrete license blocks awarded to sponsoring states and corporate entities. On paper, this fragmentation allows for coordination and environmental oversight. In reality, it institutionalizes competition. Each block becomes a fiefdom of strategic value where companies and their state sponsors conduct exploration, environmental assessments and, soon, large-scale extraction. States and corporations with deep technological capabilities, including China, Canada (via The Metals Company), Belgium (GSR), and Norway (Loke), have already deployed robotic vehicles, data-gathering systems and prototype harvesting equipment in the CCZ. These activities are not speculative; they are strategic acts of presence. By maintaining operational continuity and exclusive data on their contract areas, these actors secure a level of control that resembles territorial influence, even in the absence of sovereignty. States with territorial assets proximate to the CCZ, such as France's Clipperton Island, gain further leverage by using these holdings as logistical hubs or jurisdictional springboards. Thus, the geography of deep-sea mining is simultaneously physical, institutional and infrastructural. It maps the extension of national strategy into an unbounded, submerged arena. Pacific Island nations occupy a pivotal yet precarious position in the geopolitical structure of deep-sea mining. These states are not themselves extractive powers, but their legal status as coastal states and ISA members renders them indispensable intermediaries in the resource acquisition strategies of others. Countries like the Cook Islands, Nauru and Tonga act as sponsor states for foreign companies, enabling exploration contracts under ISA rules. In exchange, they receive royalties, infrastructure aid, and diplomatic engagement. Yet the leverage they wield, rooted in legal procedure rather than material capacity, is increasingly fragile. As major powers deepen their technological reach and begin to act outside ISA frameworks, the value of these sponsorships diminishes. The internal divisions within the Pacific region, between those pursuing economic opportunity and those advocating environmental caution, further fracture the negotiating position of these states. Their collective influence diminishes as they are drawn into opposing alignments. This allows external actors to extract favorable terms while offering minimal safeguards in return, rendering the Pacific not just a zone of opportunity but a laboratory for strategic experimentation by larger powers. These microstates thus find themselves navigating between alignment and autonomy. While they have used their position to secure economic rents and international attention, their ability to influence outcomes is limited by their institutional capacity and the asymmetry of power in these relationships. As multilateral governance erodes, their role risks shifting from active intermediaries to passive theaters of external ambition. Environmental damage from seabed mining is not only likely, but, under current practices and regulatory frameworks, virtually inevitable. The ecological consequences (destruction of benthic habitats, disruption of deep-ocean food chains, and disturbance of carbon sequestration processes) are well-documented yet remain politically unpriced. These effects unfold on spatial and temporal scales that transcend immediate accountability. Damage incurred in the hadal depths will not register in electoral cycles or quarterly earnings. This externalization of environmental costs is structurally embedded. States and corporations reap concentrated benefits (strategic minerals, technological primacy, economic gain), while the ecological liabilities are diffused across a global commons and deferred into an indeterminate future. The legal framework that will govern these activities, particularly ISA's provisional mining code, lacks both clarity and enforceability. In this vacuum, environmental safeguards function less as constraints than as negotiable instruments. Where conservation discourse exists, it is often instrumental. Calls for moratoriums or environmental safeguards serve as tools of diplomatic leverage or political differentiation rather than as expressions of systemic restraint. The logic of extraction, once engaged, prioritizes continuity; regulatory caution is outpaced by technological momentum. This is a structurally induced outcome of a system where access is governed less by rules than by capabilities. Control over seabed minerals is increasingly a function of who can act first, remain longest and extract most efficiently. Precedent supplants principle. The seabed will be shaped through deployments, licenses and machinery already descending into the depths. For states seeking mineral security and strategic autonomy, the calculus is clear: defer the ecological reckoning and secure the resource base now. Paulo Aguiar earned a master's degree in International Relations from NOVA University Lisbon, specializing in Realism, Classical Geopolitics and Strategy. As a professional in geopolitical risk analysis and strategic foresight, Paulo regularly shares his insights through various publications and on his own Substack.
Asia Times
2 hours ago
- Asia Times
Ukraine's Operation Spider Web redefined the front lines of war
A series of blasts at airbases deep inside Russia on June 1, 2025, came as a rude awakening to Moscow's military strategists. The Ukrainian strike at the heart Russia's strategic bombing capability could also upend the traditional rules of war: It provides smaller military a blueprint for countering a larger nation's ability to launch airstrikes from deep behind the front lines. Ukraine's Operation Spider Web involved 117 remote-controlled drones that were smuggled into Russia over an 18-month period and launched toward parked aircraft by operators miles away. The raid destroyed or degraded more than 40 Tu-95, Tu-160 and Tu-22 M3 strategic bombers, as well as an A-50 airborne-early-warning jet, according to officials in Kyiv. That would represent roughly one-third of Russia's long-range strike fleet and about US$7 billion in hardware. Even if satellite imagery ultimately pares back those numbers, the scale of the damage is hard to miss. The logic behind the strike is even harder to ignore. Traditional modern military campaigns revolve around depth. Warring nations try to build combat power in relatively safe 'rear areas' — logistics hubs that are often hundreds, if not thousands, of miles from the front line. These are the places where new military units form and long-range bombers, like those destroyed in Ukraine's June 1 operation, reside. Since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Kremlin has leaned heavily on its deep-rear bomber bases — some over 2,000 miles from the front in Ukraine. It has paired this tactic with launching waves of Iranian-designed Shahed attack drones to keep Ukrainian cities under nightly threat. The Russian theory of victory is brutally simple: coercive airpower. If missiles and one-way drones fall on Kyiv often enough, civilian morale in Ukraine will crack, even as the advance of Russian ground forces gets bogged down on the front line. For Kyiv's military planners, destroying launch platforms undercuts that theory far more cheaply than the only other alternative: intercepting every cruise missile in flight, which to date has achieved an 80% success rate but relies heavily on Western-donated equipment coming increasingly in short supply. Airfields have always been critical targets in modern warfare, the logic being that grounded bombers and fighters are more vulnerable and easier to hit. In the North African desert during World War II, the United Kingdom's Special Air Service used jeep raids and delayed-action explosives to knock out an estimated 367 enemy aircraft spread across North Africa — firepower the Luftwaffe never regenerated. That same year, German paratroopers seized the airstrips on Crete, denying the British Royal Air Force a forward base and tipping an entire island campaign. A generation later in Vietnam, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army assault teams armed with satchel charges and mortars repeatedly penetrated US perimeters at Phan Rang, Da Nang and Bien Hoa, burning fighters on the ramp and forcing the diversion of thousands of American soldiers to base security. The underlying playbook of hitting aircraft on the ground remains effective because it imposes cascading costs. Every runway cratered and every bomber torched obliges the military hit to pour money into ways to frustrate such attacks, be it hardened shelters or the dispersal of squadrons across multiple bases. Such air attacks also divert fighters from the front lines to serve as guards. US soldiers look at wreckage of an Air Force B-57 Canberra bomber after Viet Cong mortars destroyed 21 planes at Bien Hoa airbase in 1964. AP Photo via The Conversation In Operation Spider Web, Ukraine has sought to repeat that strategy while also leveraging surprise to achieve psychological shock and dislocation. But the Ukraine operation taps into a uniquely 21st-century aspect of warfare. The advent of unmanned drone warfare has increasingly seen military practitioners talk of 'air littorals' — military speak for the slice of atmosphere that sits above ground forces yet below the altitude where high-performance fighters and bombers traditionally roam. Drones thrive in this region, where they bypass most infantry weapons and fly too low for traditional radar-guided defenses to track reliably, despite being able to incapacitate targets like fuel trucks or strategic bombers. By smuggling small launch teams of drones within a few miles of each runway, Kyiv created pop-up launchpads deep into Russia and were able to catch the enemy off guard and unprepared. The economic benefits of Ukraine's approach are stark. Whereas a drone, a lithium-battery and a warhead cost well under $3,000, a Russian Tu-160 bomber costs in the region of $250 million. Ukraine's Operation Spider Web will have immediate and costly consequences for Russia, even if the strikes end up being less destructive than Kyiv currently claims. Surviving bombers will need to be relocated. Protecting bases from repeat attacks will mean erecting earthen revetments, installing radar-guided 30 mm cannons and electronic-warfare jammers to cover possible attack vectors. This all costs money. Even more importantly, the operation will divert trained soldiers and technicians who might otherwise rotate to the front line in support of the coming summer offensive. Russian MiG-31bm fighter jets, a Tu-160 strategic bomber and an Il-78 aerial refueling tanker fly over Moscow during a rehearsal for the WWII Victory Parade on May 4, 2022. Photo: Kirill Kudryavtsev / AFP via Getty Images The raid also punches a hole in Russia's nuclear weapons capabilities. Losing as many as a dozen Tu-95 and Tu-160 aircraft, which double as nuclear-capable bombers, would be strategically embarrassing and may prod the Kremlin to rethink the frequency of long-range air patrols. Beyond the physical and financial damage to Russia's fleet, Ukraine's operation also comes with a potent psychological effect. It signals that Ukraine, more than three years into a war aimed at grinding down morale, is able to launch sophisticated operations deep into Russian territory. Ukraine's security service operation unfolded in patient, granular steps: 18 months of smuggling disassembled drones and batteries across borders inside innocuous cargo, weeks of quietly reassembling kits, and meticulous scouting of camera angles to ensure that launch trucks would be indistinguishable from normal warehouse traffic on commercial satellite imagery. Operators drove those trucks to presurveyed firing points and then deployed the drones at treetop height. Because each of the drones was a one-way weapon, a dozen pilots could work in parallel either close to the launch site or remotely, steering live-video feeds toward parked bombers. Videos of the strike suggest multiple near-simultaneous impacts across wide swaths of runway — enough to swamp any ad hoc small-arms response from perimeter guards. For Ukraine, the episode demonstrates a repeatable method for striking deep, well-defended assets. The same playbook can, in principle, be adapted to missile storage depots and, more importantly, factories across Russia mass-producing Shahed attack drones. Kyiv has needed to find a way to counter the waves of drones and ballistic missile strikes that in recent months have produced more damage than Russian cruise missiles. The Center for Strategic and International Studies' Firepower Strike Tracker has shown that Shaheds are now the most frequent and most cost-effective air weapon in Russia's campaign. But the implications of Operation Spider Web go far beyond the Russia-Ukraine conflict by undermining the old idea that rear areas are safe. Comparatively inexpensive drones, launched from inside Russia's own territory, wiped out aircraft that cost billions and underpin Moscow's long-range strike and nuclear signaling. That's a strategy than can be easily replicated by other attackers against other countries. Anyone who can smuggle, hide and pilot small drones can sabotage an adversary's ability to generate air attacks. Air forces that rely on large, fixed bases must either harden, disperse or accept that their runway is a new front line. Benjamin Jensen is professor of strategic studies at the Marine Corps University School of Advanced Warfighting and scholar-in-residence, American University School of International Service This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
South China Morning Post
2 hours ago
- South China Morning Post
Ukraine bombarded by deadly Russian strikes as peace talks falter: ‘shocked I'm alive'
Russia struck Ukraine with a thunderous aerial bombardment overnight, further dampening hopes that the warring sides could reach a peace deal any time soon, days after Kyiv embarrassed the Kremlin with a surprising drone attack on military airfields deep inside Russia. Advertisement The barrage was one of the fiercest of the three-year war, lasting several hours, striking six Ukrainian territories, and killing at least six people and injuring about 80 others, Ukrainian officials said on Friday. Among the dead were three emergency responders in Kyiv, one person in Lutsk, and two people in Chernihiv. The attack came after US President Donald Trump said his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, told him Moscow would respond to Ukraine's attack on Sunday on Russian military airfields. It was also hours after Trump said it might be better to let Ukraine and Russia 'fight for a while' before pulling them apart and pursuing peace. Trump's comments were a remarkable detour from his often-stated appeals to stop the war and signalled he may be giving up on recent peace efforts. Ukrainian cities have come under regular bombardment since Russia invaded its neighbour in February 2022. The attacks have killed more than 12,000 civilians, according to the United Nations. 'Russia doesn't change its stripes,' Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said. Advertisement The war has continued unabated even as a US-led diplomatic push for a settlement has brought two rounds of direct peace talks between delegations from Russia and Ukraine. The negotiations delivered no significant breakthroughs, however, and the sides remain far apart on their terms for an end to the fighting.
