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First Post
21-05-2025
- Politics
- First Post
Is Putin using Trump to kill Nato?
Counting on US President Donald Trump's non-commitment to Nato, Russian leader Vladimir Putin appears to be preparing the groundwork to render the military alliance meaningless. Here is how build-up near Finland's border could be the first step. read more Russia is counting on US President Donald Trump to render the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) meaningless. Russia appears to have started laying the groundwork for Nato's demise with military deployment along its border with Finland — the nation joined Nato in 2023. While the United States had been the driving force of Nato for generations, Trump has essentially withdrawn from the military alliance in his second term. On the campaign trail, he said that he would encourage Russia to invade Nato members and 'do whatever the hell they want' if they would not do his bidding. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD As Trump remains not just non-committal to Nato but outright hostile, the alliance's basis of collective defence is under threat. It appears that Russia plans to needle Nato members in the coming years to erode the collective defence principle and render the alliance meaningless. Russia ramps up military infra along Finland's border In recent months, Russia has ramped up military infrastructure and deployment along the 830 mile-long (1,336.75 kilometers) border with Finland, according to satellite imagery obtained and analysed by The New York Times. The imagery shows row after row of tents, new warehouses for military vehicles, beefed up shelters for fighter plane, and construction at a helicopter base. Once the intense war with Ukraine ends or slows down, Russia could redeploy several thousands of soldiers along with heavy equipment along Finland's border to arm-twist Nato, according to analysts. It looks like that Putin is preparing for war with NATO. Russia is building up military forces near the border with Finland - constructing bases, bunkers, training grounds, and other military infrastructure in the area. 1/n — Roman Sheremeta 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@rshereme) May 19, 2025 The Times reported Finnish government as saying that it has up to five years before Russia could amass forces across the border to threatening levels. Other than the infrastructure described above, the satellite imagery also shows that Russia has also ramped up military presence and infrastructure in the general Arctic region near the border, according to the newspaper. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD ALSO READ: 3 years of Ukraine war: Zelenskyy stands cornered and betrayed as Trump mainstreams Putin Russian helicopters have returned to a base near the Artic port city of Murmansk after more than two decades. Dozens of fighter planes have been deployed at the Olenya air base in the same region. Both of these bases are within 200 kms of the border with Finland. Another base just 64 kms from Finnish border, at a place called Kamenka, has more than a hundred new tents, as per satellite imagery. 'They are expanding their brigades into divisions, which means that the units near our borders will grow significantly — by thousands,' Emil Kastehelmi, an analyst with the Black Bird Group told The Times. Can Putin render Nato meaningless with such moves? To be sure, analysts do not expect Vladimir Putin to make a move now when Russia is completely engaged in the war in Ukraine. However, once the war ends in Ukraine or goes into a low-intensity mode, Russia is bound to turn its attention to its other neighbours. Trump has made it clear that he is not interested in a peace deal that ends the war respectably for Ukraine or deters Russia from further military invasions of Europe. In fact, in a call with Putin on Monday, he endorsed the Russian position on the war and, in a blow to Ukraine and its European partners, gave up his own call for a 30-day ceasefire. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD It is not just on Ukraine that Trump and Putin are on the same page. They appear to be on the same page regarding Europe and the world at large too. Putin invaded Ukraine out of his ideological commitment to the restoration of the sphere of influence that was lost with the fall of the Soviet Union. Trump believes in the same sphere of influence concept and the two leaders appear to have an understanding where Trump carves out his sphere in the Americas and Putin carves out his sphere in Europe. Hence Trump has abandoned Nato commitments in Europe and Putin is silent about US expansionism in Americas and Atlantic where Trump has announced he would annex Greenland island, Canada, and Panama Canal. ALSO READ: In 100 days, Trump jolts settled ties and treaties to sow new global order There are indications that European nations would hesitate to take military action against Russia without US support — even though the United Kingdom has been working on a 'coalition of the willing' to militarily support Ukraine, it has said it would not deploy soldiers to Ukraine without US support. Such US support would not be expected under Trump — or a successor who shares Trump's worldview. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD This would mean that Putin would need to mount incursions into smaller Nato members that share borders with Russia. If these nations fail to respond on their own or fellow Nato nations fail to mobilise militarily to their defence under the collective defence principle, Nato would be essentially dead as there would be essentially no Nato without the collective defence principle, according to Jamie Metzl, a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council who previously served in the White House National Security Council. 'If Putin gets anything resembling a victory in Ukraine, what he is going to do next is to needle a Nato member, such as Lithuania, and even if Russia goes just 50 feet inside Lithuania, the country is understandably going to invoke Article 5. If Nato fails to mobilise in Lithuania's support, then the collective defence principle of Nato would be dead and Putin would have defeated Nato with just a minor incursion with perhaps a small contingent of 'little green men' that he used in Crimea,' Metzl previously told Firstpost. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The build-up near Finland's border appears to be a preparation for such needling that threatens to render Nato meaningless.
Reuters
29-04-2025
- Business
- Reuters
US Supreme Court fight may shape Trump's ability to fire Fed chair
WASHINGTON, April 29 (Reuters) - When the U.S. Supreme Court rules on President Donald Trump 's effort to remove two federal labor board members, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will be watching for clues about his own job security. The court fight over Trump's firings of two Democratic labor board members despite legal protections for these positions has emerged as a key test of his efforts to bring under his sway federal agencies meant by Congress to be independent from a president's direct control. At issue in the dispute over Trump's dismissals of Cathy Harris from the Merit Systems Protection Board and Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board is whether safeguards passed by Congress to prevent officials in these posts from being fired without cause encroach on presidential authority set out in the U.S. Constitution. Harris and Wilcox were appointed by the Republican president's Democratic predecessor Joe Biden, and both had years left in their terms in office. The cases are being watched as potential proxies for whether Trump has the authority to fire Fed officials, particularly after his recent criticism of Powell shook financial markets and fueled questions about the U.S. central bank's ability to pursue monetary policy free from political interference. Powell began a four-year term as Fed chief in 2018 after being nominated by Trump during his first presidential term and was reappointed by Biden to serve in that post to May 2026. His 14-year term on the Fed's Board of Governors is set to run through January 2028. Members of the Fed's Board of Governors, like the labor board members, have "for-cause" removal protections meant to let a president fire them only for reasons such as inefficiency or malfeasance, not policy disagreement. Legal experts said that if the Supreme Court decides to eliminate removal protections for the two labor boards, it may try to create an exception that would insulate Federal Reserve officials like Powell in a bid to preserve the Fed's independence. The court gestured in this direction in a footnote to a 2020 ruling that suggested, but did not decide, that the Fed may be able to "claim a special historical status" entitling it to a greater degree of distance from presidential control than some other independent agencies. 'PERSONAL POLICY PREFERENCES' Other legal grounds have been offered for why the Fed should be more insulated from presidential control than certain other agencies, including an argument advanced by some conservative judges and advocates that the central bank does not necessarily wield substantial executive power. But legal scholars who found the rationales unconvincing said there is no principled reason for treating the Fed differently than the labor boards under a series of Supreme Court rulings that have upheld for-cause protections for certain agencies. "If the court carves out a special exception for the Federal Reserve, it will appear that the justices are not applying Article II but legislating from the bench and substituting their personal policy preferences," said Christine Chabot, a professor at Marquette University Law School in Wisconsin, referring to the constitutional provision delineating presidential powers. Trump's move to oust Harris and Wilcox was part of his far-reaching shakeup and downsizing of the U.S. government, including firing thousands of workers, dismantling agencies, installing loyalists in key jobs and purging career officials. Harris and Wilcox filed separate legal challenges to their firings, leading two Washington-based federal judges to block their removal under a 1935 Supreme Court precedent in a case called Humphrey's Executor v. United States. In that ruling, the court rebuffed Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt's attempt to defy protections for U.S. Federal Trade Commission members. Chief Justice John Roberts on April 9 granted the Trump administration's request to temporarily halt the judicial orders that had kept Harris and Wilcox in office. The labor boards after that decision confirmed the officials were no longer in their posts. The action by Roberts gave the justices more time to decide whether Trump can keep Harris and Wilcox sidelined while their legal challenges proceed. That decision could come at any time. Justice Department lawyers have asked the Supreme Court to consider hearing arguments on a fast-track basis on whether the labor board protections encroached on presidential power and whether Humphrey's Executor was wrongly decided and should be overruled. They said a ruling in favor of Trump need not have implications for other agencies such as the Fed. Even some prominent conservative scholars have expressed skepticism that overruling the 1935 decision could be limited in this manner. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. "I don't think that the court could overrule Humphrey's Executor and logically not bring into doubt the for-cause removal protections for members of the Federal Reserve Board," said John Yoo, who served as a Justice Department lawyer under Republican President George W. Bush and is now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. FED INDEPENDENCE Concerns about Fed independence grew when Trump rattled financial markets by repeatedly criticizing Powell over the Fed's decision, for now, not to further cut interest rates. Trump on April 21 even called Powell a " major loser." The president deescalated the matter the next day by saying he has no plans to fire Powell. Trump previously said he believes Powell would leave if he asked him to do so. Powell has said the Fed will wait for more data on the U.S. economy's direction before changing interest rates and has cautioned that Trump's tariff policies risked pushing inflation and employment further from the central bank's goals. Shortly after Trump's election last year, Powell said he would refuse to leave office early if the president tried to oust him and that he cannot be legally removed. Powell said on April 16 that he is "monitoring carefully" the dispute at the Supreme Court over the labor board firings. Powell said he did not think the outcome of those cases would apply to the Fed but did not explain why in those remarks. The fate of the statutory tenure protections in question likely rests on how the justices treat Humphrey's Executor and related rulings. In the 1935 ruling, the court upheld for-cause removal protections for Federal Trade Commission members, faulting Roosevelt's firing of a commissioner for policy differences. In that decision, the court said that restricting a president's removal of commissioners was lawful because that agency performed tasks more closely resembling legislative and judicial functions, rather than those belonging squarely to the executive branch, headed by the president. The Constitution set up a separation of powers among the federal government's coequal executive, legislative and judicial branches. Many proponents of a conservative legal doctrine called the " unitary executive" theory that envisions vast executive authority for a president have portrayed Humphrey's as wrongly decided. They argue that Article II gives a president sole authority over the executive branch, including the power to fire heads of independent agencies despite protections under law. The Supreme Court in recent decades narrowed the reach of Humphrey's Executor but stopped short of overruling it. In a 2020 ruling that upheld Humphrey's, it said Article II gives the president the general power to remove heads of agencies at will, but that the Humphrey's Executor decision had carved out an exception that allowed for-cause removal protections for certain multi-member, expert agencies. Justice Department lawyers in filings to the court contended that the judges presiding over the Harris and Wilcox cases read the Humphrey's exception too broadly. They argued that the 1935 precedent upheld tenure protections for Federal Trade Commission members because that agency does not significantly encroach on presidential authority, while the Merit Systems Protection Board and National Labor Relations Board "wield substantial executive power." According to Chabot, the Federal Reserve exercises substantial executive power, too. If Humphrey's Executor permits for-cause removal protections only for multi-member, expert agencies that do not exercise substantial executive power, then tenure protections for the two labor boards and the Fed "will fail," Chabot said. The court's 2020 footnote hinting that the Fed could be distinguished from other independent agencies by its "special historical status" is unconvincing, according to Todd Phillips, a law professor at Georgia State University's Robinson College of Business. "I predict that the court is going to come up with some rationale" to treat the Fed's independence differently, Phillips said. "If they do that, it's not going to be principled."
Washington Post
30-03-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
Putin says US push for Greenland rooted in history, vows to uphold Russian interest in the Arctic
MOSCOW — Russia's President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that President Donald Trump's push for control over Greenland wasn't surprising given longtime U.S. interest in the mineral-rich territory. Speaking at a policy forum in the Artic port of Murmansk, Putin noted that the United States first considered plans to win control over Greenland in the 19th century, and then offered to buy it from Denmark after World War II.
The Independent
27-03-2025
- Science
- The Independent
Arctic ends winter with lowest sea ice cover on record
The Arctic has ended the winter with the lowest sea ice coverage on record, US scientists have said. Arctic sea ice melts and regrows over the year, freezing throughout the winter months to reach a maximum extent in late February or March, then melting through the summer to hit a low point in early or mid-September. Preliminary results suggest this year's maximum extent of sea ice cover is the lowest in the 47-year satellite record, the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) at the University of Boulder, Colorado, in the US said. Artic sea ice likely reached its maximum extent for the year, at 14.33 million square kilometres (5.53 million square miles) on March 22, the scientists said. That is below the previous record low of 14.41 million square kilometres (5.56 million square miles) set on March 7 2017. NSIDC senior research scientist Walt Meier said: 'This new record low is yet another indicator of how Arctic sea ice has fundamentally changed from earlier decades. 'But even more importantly than the record low is that this year adds yet another data point to the continuing long-term loss of Arctic sea ice in all seasons.' Arctic sea ice is in retreat in the face of human-driven climate change, with warnings the region could be classed as 'ice-free' in September, when it reaches its minimum extent at the end of summer, in the 2020s or 2030s. The melting of Arctic sea ice has a range of impacts, from increased warming by reducing the heat-reflecting capacity of the white ice, and coastal erosion, to putting pressure on wildlife such as polar bears, causing fish species to move and increasing human activity such as shipping. The record low Arctic maximum extent follows a near-record-low minimum for Antarctic sea ice at the end of the region's summer, set on March 1 2025. The Antarctic ended the summer with sea ice covering 1.98 million square kilometres (764,000 square miles), putting it tied for the second lowest annual minimum in the satellite record, the NSIDC said.
Yahoo
27-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Putin says US push for Greenland ‘rooted in history'
Russia's President Vladimir Putin has said that US President Donald Trump's push for control over Greenland was not surprising given long-time US interest in the mineral-rich territory. Speaking at a policy forum in the Artic port of Murmansk, Mr Putin noted that the US first considered plans to win control over Greenland in the 19th century, and then offered to buy it from Denmark after the Second World War. 'It can look surprising only at first glance and it would be wrong to believe that this is some sort of extravagant talk by the current US administration,' Mr Putin said. 'It's obvious that the United States will continue to systematically advance its geostrategic, military-political and economic interests in the Arctic.' Mr Trump irked much of Europe by suggesting that the US should in some form control the self-governing, mineral-rich territory of Denmark, a US ally and Nato member. As the nautical gateway to the Arctic and North Atlantic approaches to North America, Greenland has broader strategic value as both China and Russia seek access to its waterways and natural resources. US vice president JD Vance and his wife are due to visit an American military base in Greenland on Friday on a trip that was scaled back after an uproar by Greenlanders and Danes. Speaking on Thursday, Mr Putin noted that Russia is worried about Nato's activities in the Arctic and will respond by strengthening its military capability in the polar region. 'We are certainly concerned about Nato members describing the Far North as the region of possible conflicts,' he said, noting that Russia's neighbours Finland and Sweden have joined the alliance. 'Russia has never threatened anyone in the Arctic, but we will closely follow the developments and mount an appropriate response by increasing our military capability and modernising military infrastructure.' Russia has sought to assert its influence over wide areas of the Arctic in competition with the US, Canada, Denmark and Norway as shrinking polar ice from the warming planet offers new opportunities for resources and shipping routes. China also has shown an increasing interest in the region, believed to hold up to one-fourth of the Earth's undiscovered oil and gas. 'We won't allow any infringement on our country's sovereignty, reliably safeguard our national interests while supporting peace and stability in the polar region,' Mr Putin said. While pledging to strengthen Russia's military foothold in the Arctic, Mr Putin said that Moscow was holding the door open to broader international cooperation in the region. 'The stronger our positions will be, the more significant the results will be and the broader opportunities we will have to launch international projects in the Arctic involving the countries that are friendly to us, and, possibly, Western countries if they show interest in joint work. I'm sure the time will come to launch such projects.' Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund and Mr Putin's envoy for international investment who took part in talks with US officials, told reporters last month that Russia and the US should develop joint energy ventures. 'We need joint projects, including in the Arctic and other regions,' he said.
