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News18
2 days ago
- Business
- News18
Trump's Tariff War Could Turn Global Trade Into An 'Arm-Wrestling Match', Warns Singapore FM
Products from the European Union, Japan and South Korea are taxed at 15 per cent, while imports from Taiwan, Vietnam, and Bangladesh are taxed at 20 per cent. Singapore's Finance Minister Vivian Balakrishnan said that Trump's tariff war risks turning global trade into an 'arm-wrestling match". He also mentioned that the tariff by the US President can also trigger reciprocal tariffs from other countries. His remark came during the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, according to a report by Bloomberg. 'Instead of a rules-based global system that promotes trade, you now have a system where every trade agreement becomes a bilateral arm-wrestling match," Balakrishnan said. His remark came before Trump's imposed tariff on more than 60 countries. Products from the European Union, Japan and South Korea are taxed at 15 per cent, while imports from Taiwan, Vietnam, and Bangladesh are taxed at 20 per cent. Trump also expects the EU, Japan and South Korea to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the United States. 'I think the growth is going to be unprecedented," Trump said Wednesday. He said the US was 'taking in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs," but did not provide a specific figure for revenues because 'we don't even know what the final number is" regarding the rates. Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order to impose additional 25 per cent tariffs on Indian goods over the purchase of Russian oil, taking the total levies to 50 per cent. India called Trump's move 'unfair, unjustified and unreasonable" and said that it will take all necessary steps to protect its interests. Reacting to Trump's tariff, PM Modi had said that India will never compromise. 'Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order to impose additional 25 per cent tariffs on Indian goods over the purchase of Russian oil, taking the total levies to 50 per cent. India called Trump's move 'unfair, unjustified and unreasonable" and said that it will take all necessary steps to protect its interests," PM Modi said on Thursday. India began pushing back immediately after the initial 25 per cent tariffs were announced. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) issued a statement strongly rejecting the claims and justifications put forward by Trump against a key ally like India. view comments Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Atlantic
4 days ago
- Politics
- Atlantic
Hegseth's Headlong Pursuit of Academic Mediocrity
The Trump administration is right about many of the failures of elite universities, particularly when compared with character-oriented institutions such as the United States Army. Consider the case of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who was admitted to and graduated from prestigious degree programs at top universities but resigned from the Army National Guard at the lowly rank of major. The Army, unlike Princeton and Harvard, knew a petulant, insecure mediocrity when it saw one. For whatever reason—perhaps Hegseth had a rough time in freshman calculus or was embarrassed while parsing a difficult passage of Plato—he seems determined to bar academics or anyone who faintly resembles one from contact with the armed forces. He has prohibited officers from attending the Aspen Security Forum, presided over by well-known radicals such as my former boss Condoleezza Rice. He has extended this ban to participation in think-tank events where officers might meet and even get into arguments with retired generals and admirals, not to mention former ambassadors, undersecretaries of defense, retired spies, and, worst of all, people with Ph.D.s who know foreign languages or operations research. The latest spasm of Pentagon anti-intellectualism has come in the shape of efforts to remold the military educational system. To its shame, and apparently just because Laura Loomer said it should, the Army has meekly fired Jen Easterly from her position on the faculty at West Point, even though she is a graduate, a Rhodes Scholar, a three-tour Afghan War veteran, and a bona fide cybersecurity expert. In this case, at least, Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll seems to have given up on the honor part of West Point's motto, 'Duty, honor, country.' From the February 1907 issue: The spirit of old West Point Secretary of the Navy John Phelan—whose nautical and military experience is admittedly nil — has directed his acting assistant secretary to purge 60 civilian professors from the U.S. Naval Academy, Fox News reported, and to replace them with military faculty to 'promote fitness standards, maritime skills and marksmanship as essential component of the warrior ethos.' (Note: That should be components —plural—but lethal guys don't need no grammar.) The humanities, he ordered, should be particularly targeted. The U.S. Air Force Academy is headed in the same direction. Perhaps this order results from Phelan having read too much C. S. Forester and Patrick O'Brian and believing that the key to naval leadership is ordering your gallant tars to back topsails, giving the enemy frigate two broadsides at point-blank range, and boarding it in the smoke with cutlass in hand. In that case, he may wish to read up on advances in naval technology and tactics since 1800. More likely, Phelan is toadying to his boss, who likes to huff and puff about warrior virtues as a way of avoiding the hard work of fixing the backlog in ship maintenance that is wearing the Navy out, or plunging deeply into the complexities of integrating missiles, cyberattacks, space reconnaissance, mines, manned aircraft, and subsurface drones in an extended campaign near Taiwan. Like other formerly respectable officials such as National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, last seen justifying with a feeble grin the firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for producing inconvenient numbers, Phelan may be going along with something he knows is stupid to appease his ignorant and dyspeptic boss. Not quite warrior virtue, in that case. Most officers—roughly 80 percent—are commissioned through ROTC and direct-commissioning programs, not the military academies. If being educated by civilian faculty is incompatible with the warrior ethos, then the implication is that the Pentagon's leaders believe that four out of five commissioned officers are unfit for service. To their shame, the generals seem not to have risked their careers by vigorously protesting these measures—servility, apparently, not being confined in the Pentagon to civilian leaders. If the Pentagon does assign more military faculty to the service academies, it may eventually wake up to the fact that its uniformed professors will obtain their advanced degrees mostly from the same educational institutions that are in the grip of identity-mad globalists. And the dark secret is that military graduate students (I have taught many) plunge enthusiastically into academic life and often wish to linger there. All of this would be amusing if it were not so appallingly destructive. Civilian faculty in military educational institutions play a crucial role: Unlike their military colleagues, they can devote a lifetime to mastery of their specialties, including teaching. They can bring cadets and midshipmen into contact with a wider world; the service academies are, of necessity, inbred places where the students all have similar clothes, haircuts, and aspirations. While it is important to have officers teach in departments such as English—General Frederick Franks, one of the commanders of U.S. forces in Iraq in 1991, led a poetry club while teaching at West Point—they cannot in the nature of things be the backbone of such departments. Their busy careers simply do not give them the necessary time. At the more advanced professional military educational institutions such as the war colleges, civilians will almost invariably have deeper expertise than their uniformed counterparts in areas such as military history, foreign culture, and politics, and even in technical subjects such as cyber operations. The American ethos is that officers should be generalists whenever possible, whereas teaching and scholarship require more in the way of specialization. The chances, unfortunately, are that further purges of the civilian professoriate await. The Russians and Chinese can only rejoice. A historical data point: The famous Kriegsakademie, the war college of the German General Staff, was overwhelmingly dominated by officers, except in subjects such as language instruction. This helped foster a belligerent and strategically obtuse military culture in the years before the First World War. Meanwhile, the greatest German military historian of the 19th and early-20th centuries, Hans Delbrück, was shunned by the German army for his insightful critiques of the General Staff's views. It would have done far better to have hired and listened to him before the General Staff led their country to disaster in the First World War. William Francis Butler, a Victorian British general who served from the plains of Canada to the Coromandel Coast of India, was a talented commander and no less talented a writer. In his biography of that strange military genius Charles Gordon, he lamented 'the idea prevalent in the minds of many persons that the soldier should be a species of man distinct from the rest of the community' who 'should be purely and simply a soldier, ready to knock down upon word of command being duly given for that purpose, but knowing nothing of the business of building up.' He concluded: 'The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards.' That, unfortunately, is the direction that the Pentagon's decisions are taking the U.S. armed forces. There is a certain kind of soldier who can only be comfortable in the company of those just like him in outlook and prejudices. As these latest directives indicate, in Hegseth's case, that would appear to be Butler's fools.
Atlantic
6 days ago
- Politics
- Atlantic
The Pentagon's New Isolationism
Last month, a group of seven U.S. generals and admirals—including the top admiral in charge of U.S. military operations in the Asia-Pacific region—prepared to travel to the Aspen Security Forum, in Colorado. Security officials had spoken at the annual conference for years, including during Donald Trump's first term, and were set to discuss topics such as the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, the future of AI, and threats from China. But a day before the forum began, the officers' staff got calls from the Pentagon telling them to stay away. On social media, Sean Parnell, the Defense Department's top spokesperson, later made clear why: The forum, he said, was 'hosted by an organization that promotes the evils of globalism, disdain for America, and hatred for our great president, Donald J. Trump.' Aspen, it turned out, was only the beginning. Within days, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had ordered the DOD to vet all future event attendance by any defense official. In a statement to Politico, Parnell declared that the move was meant to 'ensure the Department of Defense is not lending its name and credibility to organizations, forums, and events that run counter to the values of this administration.' (The Aspen Institute, which sponsors the security forum, describes itself as nonpartisan.) Parnell's characterization of the new policy was vague, but it represented an abrupt departure from long-established DOD practices, and an important shift in the way that the military engages with the outside world: A Pentagon that has already grown more insular under Hegseth could end up cutting itself off from thinkers and ideas beyond the building, or at least those with which the administration disagrees. Tom Nichols: The Pentagon against the think tanks Military personnel and conference planners I spoke with described the decision as the latest battle in a broader war on ideas at the Pentagon under Hegseth. Earlier this year, the DOD eliminated the Office of Net Assessment, which had been created in the 1970s as a hub for strategic analysts to produce internal assessments of U.S. readiness against potential foes. Hegseth, who himself keeps a small group of advisers, was behind both decisions, defense officials told me. Troops and civilians attend hundreds of events annually on behalf of the Pentagon, and have been doing so for decades. Whether gatherings on heady topics such as economic warfare and 'gray zone' tactics or highly technical symposia about combatting rust on ships and the future of drone warfare, these events keep the military plugged into ideas from scholars and industry. Particularly since the Iraq War, the military has said that it wants to seek out ways to challenge its assumptions and solicit outside views—to make officers think through their plans and strategies and the second- and third-order effects of their decisions. Conferences are some of the main venues for this kind of exchange, though not the only ones; officers from dozens of other nations sit alongside American counterparts at U.S. war colleges, for example. Previous administrations have required military personnel to secure approval to attend conferences. The difference, this time, is the apparently partisan slant to the vetting process. By prohibiting DOD personnel from engaging with viewpoints that the administration disagrees with, defense officials and conference planners told me, the Pentagon risks groupthink that could have real consequences. Pete Mansoor, a retired Army colonel who served as executive officer to General David Petraeus during the 2007 surge in Iraq, told me he believes that Hegseth's emphasis on 'lethality' over the kind of strategic thinking often fostered at conferences and think tanks could prove dangerous. 'The fact that officers stopped thinking strategically and only thought about lethality resulted in a war that was almost lost in Iraq,' Mansoor, now a senior faculty fellow at Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Security Studies, said. 'I'm sure the Russian army also stresses lethality,' he continued, 'but they have educated their generals on the basis of a million casualties' in Ukraine. If the department continues to ban conference attendance in a substantial way, it will also make U.S. forces more like their Russian and Chinese counterparts, which in many cases can seek outside views only through state-sanctioned academics. 'When did our ideas become so fragile that they can't stand up to someone who has alternate views?' one defense official asked me. (The official requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about this issue.) The Defense Department review of conference attendance is having an immediate impact. Only after the policy was announced did Pentagon officials realize how many conferences military personnel attend, leading to a scramble to draft formal guidance across the force, defense officials told me. A DOD spokesperson was unable to tell me when such guidance will be released, and responded to a request for comment by pointing me to Parnell's statement about the review. In the meantime, military personnel are preemptively canceling their attendance at conferences. Some inside the Pentagon have even canceled internal meetings, fearful of running afoul of the new ban on 'events' and 'forums' not approved beforehand. National-security experts at think tanks, which often host security conferences, told me they are now unsure how much they can engage with American service members and the civilians working alongside them. Also unclear is whether the policy applies to industry-related conferences, some of which are sponsored by private companies that spend millions of dollars to host them. Adding to the confusion, it was not initially clear whether the policy applied to one of the services, the Coast Guard, which falls under the Department of Homeland Security, not the DOD; a Coast Guard spokesperson told me that the service is working to align its policy with current DOD guidance. Some military leaders dislike attending conferences and think-tank events, of course. Appearing in public forums can mean facing political questions and potentially giving a career-ending answer. Moreover, some leaders argue, think tanks are not always the best source of new ideas, particularly given that so many of their staff members once worked in government themselves. To tackle national-security threats, generals and admirals should be focused on warfare, not speaking to those who have never been on the front lines, the argument goes. But the U.S. military has had a symbiotic relationship with think tanks for years. While government employees and military officers are mired in day-to-day operations and focused on tactical warfare, outside scholars have the time and space for engaging in strategic thinking and coming up with solutions to thorny problems. Some think tanks have created positions for serving officers, and the Pentagon has also created internal positions for think tankers, in part to facilitate an exchange of ideas. 'So often in government, you are choosing between awful options. You think you have found the least-bad options, and places like think tanks allow you to test that conclusion,' Mara Karlin, a former U.S. assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans, and capabilities, told me. Several real policy changes have emerged from that arrangement. Scholars at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank, produced a proposal that served as a blueprint for the 2007 surge in Iraq, at a time when the security situation in the country was deteriorating. A 2022 Center for Strategic and International Studies war-game exercise found that, in a hypothetical situation in which China invaded Taiwan, the United States would be in grave jeopardy in a matter of weeks—the Chinese could successfully sink an aircraft carrier, attack U.S. bases in the region, and bring down American fighter jets. The exercise spurred Pentagon officials to reassess the military planning for a potential conflict in the region. American officials have also made important statements and announcements at security-focused conferences. In the days before Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, then–Vice President Kamala Harris appeared at the Munich Security Conference to outline U.S. fears of imminent war. Earlier this year, Vice President J. D. Vance also attended the Munich Security Conference, where he blasted American allies and cast doubt on the idea that the United States would remain Europe's security guarantor. This year, Hegseth himself appeared at the International Institute for Strategic Studies' Shangri-La Dialogue, in Singapore, where he outlined U.S. strategy to combat threats from China. (Breaking with long-standing military norms of nonpartisanship, Hegseth also spoke to young conservatives at Turning Point USA's Student Action Summit last month.) Later this year, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum will host a major national-security conference that usually draws Cabinet secretaries, industry leaders, and America's top generals and admirals. Several past defense secretaries have delivered the keynote speech. A phrase often invoked at the conference is peace through strength, which Reagan introduced into the modern lexicon during the 1980 presidential election, and which became a mantra of his administration's defense policy. It has also become one of Hegseth's favorite phrases for describing the military under Trump. And yet, by Hegseth's own directive, no one knows whether he or the troops he urges to embrace that approach will be able to attend the conference that celebrates it.
Axios
30-07-2025
- Politics
- Axios
The Pentagon's dramatic divorce from D.C. orthodoxy
The gulf is widening between the Pentagon and the Washington defense orthodoxy — or what's left of it under Trump 2.0. Most recently, the Pentagon suspended participation in think tank events, a signal that outside experts consulted and courted by past White Houses are to be treated as suspect. The big picture: This administration's pledge to upend the status quo, exemplified by the "Make America Lethal Again" mantra, has manifested in two forms: Axing projects and people seen as redundant or too old school, a la the U.S. Army Transformation Initiative. Disengaging from traditional public forums in favor of friendlier, niche networks, such as Steve Bannon's "War Room." Driving the news: The decision to freeze out think tanks came just days after the Pentagon's abrupt withdrawal from the Aspen Security Forum, among the most exclusive events on the national security circuit. Those mandates are causing internal confusion, Politico reports, as people attempt to decipher the new rules and what applies to whom. "No more taxpayer-funded vacations to Aspen, CO!" press secretary Kingsley Wilson wrote on X on Monday. (And no participation via Zoom either, apparently.) Under Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, she continued, "our warfighters are getting back to what they do best: defending our nation and keeping America safe." Context: Weeklong forums in faraway halls and hourlong events blocks from the White House are two-way streets. They give speakers, such as generals, undersecretaries and program executive officers, a platform to discuss recent exercises or proposals. They also give the audience, often comprising contractors, researchers and watchdogs, color and face time with officials who are otherwise hard to access. What they're saying: "I think they're going to shoot themselves in the foot here when they reduce, in essence, the reach of their message," Price Floyd, a former head of public affairs at the Pentagon, told Axios. "For industry, they don't know what to do. They don't know how to pivot," he said. "They don't know where to be. What events do they take part in? What do they support?" What we're hearing: The moves are part narrative control, part politics, part divorce from "the Blob." That derisive term for Beltway groupthink was coined by former Obama adviser Ben Rhodes. But its currency is stronger than ever. The bottom line: In the D.C. national security community, high-level experience is lauded above almost all else. But for America First folks, a long resume just means you've been doing things wrong for a long time.
Atlantic
29-07-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
The Pentagon Against the Think Tanks
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has scanned the horizon for threats, and sure enough, he has found a new group of dangerous adversaries: think - tanks, the organizations in the United States and allied nations that do policy research and advocate for various ideas. They must be stopped, according to a Defense Department announcement, because they promote 'the evil of globalism, disdain for our great country, and hatred for the president of the United States.' This particular bit of McCarthyist harrumphing was the rationalization the Pentagon gave more than a week ago for pulling out of the Aspen Security Forum, a long-running annual conference routinely attended by business leaders, military officers, academics, policy analysts, foreign officials, and top government leaders from both parties, including many past secretaries of defense. For good measure, the Defense Department spokesperson Sean Parnell invoked the current holy words of the Hegseth Pentagon: The Aspen forum, he said, did not align with the department's efforts to 'increase the lethality of our war fighters, revitalize the warrior ethos and project peace through strength on the world stage.' The Aspen gathering is not exactly a secret nest of Communists. This year's roster of speakers included former CIA Director Robert Gates, former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper—a Trump appointee—and a representative from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's office, among many others. John Phelan, the current secretary of the Navy, and Admiral Samuel Paparo, the head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, were set to attend as well. Nor is Hegseth content just to stop America's intellectual enemies cold at the Rockies: The Pentagon last week suspended Defense Department participation in all such activities, functionally a blanket ban on any interaction with think tanks or other civilian institutions that hold conferences, convene panels, and invite speakers. The New York Times reported that the order to pull out of Aspen came from Hegseth personally. And as Politico first reported, the lager ban appears to extend 'to gatherings hosted by nonprofit military associations, such as Sea Air Space, which is led by the Navy League, the military service's largest veteran organization, and Modern Day Marine, a similar trade show for the Marine Corps.' The Pentagon also 'specifically banned attendance at the Halifax International Security Forum, which takes place in Nova Scotia each winter and where the Pentagon chief is usually a top guest.' Take that, Canada. Right now, no one seems certain of how this new policy works. Hegseth appears to have suspended all such participation subject to additional review by the Pentagon's public-affairs office and general counsel, so perhaps some defense officials could one day end up attending conferences after their requests have been vetted. Good luck with that, and best wishes to the first Pentagon employee who pops up out of their cubicle to request a pass to attend such meetings. At some point soon, this prohibition will almost certainly be lifted, but why did Hegseth's Pentagon impose it in the first place? I am a former Defense Department employee who, over the course of my career, attended (and spoke at) dozens of conferences at various think tanks and other organizations, and I will make an educated guess based on experience: The main reasons are resentment, insecurity, and fear. The most ordinary reason, resentment, predates Hegseth. Government service is not exactly luxurious, and many trips are special perks that generate internal gripes about who gets to go, where they get to stay, and so on. (These trips are not exactly luxurious either, but in my government-service days, I learned that some people in the federal service chafe when other employees get free plane tickets to visit nice places.) It's possible that someone who has never been invited to one of these things convinced Hegseth—who seems reluctant to attend such events himself—that these meetings are just boondoggles and that no one should go. Bureaucratic pettiness, however, isn't enough of an explanation. One hazard for people like Hegseth and his lieutenants at a place like Aspen or the International Institute of Strategic Studies or the Halifax conference is that these are organizations full of exceptionally smart people, and even experienced and knowledgeable participants have to be sharp and prepared when they're onstage and in group discussions. The chance of being outclassed, embarrassed, or just in over one's head can be very high for unqualified people who have senior government jobs. Hegseth himself took a pass on the Munich Security Conference (usually a good venue for a new secretary of defense), and instead decided to show videos of himself working out with the troops. We can all admire Hegseth's midlife devotion to staying fit and modeling a vigorous exercise regimen for the troops (who must exercise anyway, because they are military people and are ordered to it), but America and its allies would probably benefit more from a secretary with an extra pound here and there who could actually stand at a podium in Munich or London and explain the administration's strategic vision and military plans. The overall prohibition on conferences provides Hegseth and his deputies (many of whom have no serious experience with defense issues) with an excuse for ducking out and avoiding making fools of themselves. But perhaps the most obvious and Trumpian reason for the Pentagon's brainpower lockdown is fear. Officials in this administration know that the greatest risk to their careers has nothing to do with job performance; if incompetence were a cause for dismissal, Hegseth would have been gone months ago. The far greater danger comes from the chance of saying something in public that gets the speaker sideways with Trump and turns his baleful stare across the river to the Pentagon. 'The Trump administration doesn't like dissent, I think that's pretty clear,' a Republican political strategist and previous Aspen attendee told The Hill last week. 'And they don't like dissenting views at conferences.' The problem for Trump officials is that 'dissent' can mean almost anything, because the strategic direction of the United States depends on the president's moods, his grievances, and his interactions with others, including foreign leaders. Everything can change in the space of a post on Truth Social. To step forward in a public venue and say anything of substance is a risk; the White House is an authoritarian bubble, and much like the Kremlin in the old Soviet Union, the man in charge can decide that what is policy today could be heresy tomorrow. In the end, banning attendance at meetings where defense officials can exchange ideas with other intelligent people is—like so much else in this administration—a policy generated by pettiness and self-protection, a way to batten down the Pentagon's hatches so that no one speaks out or screws up. If this directive stays in place for even a few years, however, it will damage relationships among the military, defense officials, business leaders, academics, and ordinary Americans. Public conferences are part of the American civil-military relationship. Sometimes, these are events such as Aspen, where senior officials present policies or engage their critics under a national spotlight; other gatherings at various nongovernmental organizations help citizens understand what, exactly, their government is doing. At academically oriented meetings, members of the defense community gather ideas, debate, discuss, and sometimes establish contacts for future research and exchanges. Retired Army Colonel Jeffrey McCausland, who served on the National Security Council staff and as the dean of the Army War College, told me that the Pentagon's shortsightedness could prevent important civil-military exchanges about national defense, and he wonders how far such prohibitions will go: Might the new directive mean that the 'guy who teaches history at West Point or a war college,' for example, 'can't go to a history conference and be a better history professor?' Maybe someone is mad that they didn't get to go to Colorado or Canada; perhaps someone else is worried that accepting an invitation could be career suicide. Somehow, the Pentagon has managed to engage productively in such events for decades, under administrations of both parties. But Hegseth, after a string of embarrassments—McCausland points to the lingering 'radioactivity' of Signalgate —has apparently chosen a safety-first approach. Unfortunately, the secretary still has to appear in public, and the chances of yet more stumbles from him and his team are high. But at least he'll be able to reassure the American public that the upright employees of the Pentagon won't be wined and dined by politically suspect eggheads.
