Latest news with #InvisibleCountries:JourneystotheEdgeofNationhood
Vox
4 hours ago
- Business
- Vox
Why Trump probably can't cut Musk loose
is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He is the author of the 2018 book, Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood , an exploration of border conflicts, unrecognized countries, and changes to the world map. Elon Musk gives a tour to President-elect Donald Trump and lawmakers of the control room before a test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket on November 19, 2024, in Brownsville, up is hard to do — especially when one party is a billionaire with near-unassailable dominance of the nation's ability to launch things into space, and the other is a president who has staked a significant portion of his legacy on wildly ambitious space-based projects. As President Donald Trump and his erstwhile financial backer and former DOGE boss Elon Musk traded blows on social media Thursday, the president at one point posted, 'The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon's Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn't do it!' This prompted Musk to announce that he was decommissioning SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, used to transport astronauts to the International Space Station, though he later backed down from the threat. Trump may soon find, however, that canceling Musk's contracts is a lot harder than selling his Tesla, particularly if he wants to pursue goals like his much-vaunted Golden Dome missile defense project. To get to space, the US needs SpaceX During President Joe Biden's administration, concerns were indeed raised about Musk's lucrative government contracts as well as his access to classified defense information, given his partisan political activities (unusual for a major defense contractor), communications with foreign leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin, and ties to the Chinese government. But as Vox reported last year, unwinding the government's relationship with Musk's companies is a near impossibility right now, particularly when it comes to SpaceX. The company is simply better at launching massive numbers of objects into space than any of its competitors, and it's not close: SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket was responsible for 84 percent of all satellite launches last year, and the constellation of more than 7,000 Starlink communications satellites accounts for around 65 percent of all operational satellites in orbit. The reusable Falcon 9 has become the space launch workhorse of choice for a US military and intelligence community that is ever more dependent on satellites for communications and surveillance. 'If one side or the other severed that relationship, which I don't think is practical, you would very quickly see a backlog of military satellites waiting for launch,' said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow and space defense expert at the American Enterprise Institute. Ambitious plans like the National Reconnaissance Office's ongoing project to launch a constellation of intelligence and surveillance satellites for military use would come to a 'screeching halt,' said Harrison. The US military is also increasingly reliant on SpaceX for mobile internet connectivity via a specialized military-only version of Starlink known as Starshield. For NASA, the situation is, if anything, even more dire, as shown last March when two US astronauts returned, months late, from the International Space Station on a SpaceX Dragon capsule when problems were detected on the Boeing craft that brought them into orbit on its first ever flight. Losing SpaceX 'would basically just end the US participation in the space station,' said David Burbach, an associate professor and space policy expert at the Naval War College. NASA's space shuttle program shut down in 2011. Boeing's Starliner is probably years from being a viable alternative, and going back to relying on Russian rockets — as the US did for nearly a decade between the end of the Space Shuttle and the advent of Dragon — would probably be a tough sell these days. Burbach, speaking in his personal capacity, not as a representative of the US military or war college, said such a break 'would be the kind of thing that could trigger something truly drastic' such as the White House using the Defense Production Act to take control of the program. It's not surprising Musk quickly backed down from the threat. NASA's ongoing Artemis program, which aims to eventually return humans to the Moon and establish a permanent lunar space station, is also heavily dependent on SpaceX's Starship launch vehicle, as are longer term plans for a mission to Mars. These are (or at least were) priorities for the White House: The moon and Mars missions are the only parts of NASA's budget that were increased in the president's recent budget request and the president mentioned planting 'the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars' in his inaugural address. Mars is, to put it mildly, something of a fixation for Musk, and it's hard to imagine an ongoing US program to get there without his involvement. Trump's golden dreams may require Musk A true Trump-Musk rift would also have implications for 'Golden Dome,' the ambitious plan to 'protect the homeland' from ballistic missiles, drones, hypersonic cruise missiles, and other aerial threats. Plans for Golden Dome are still a little vague and no contracts for its construction have been awarded yet, but SpaceX is reportedly a frontrunner to build a constellation of hundreds of new satellites to detect missile launches and determine if they are headed toward the United States, and possibly even intercept them from space. According to Reuters, SpaceX is bidding for portions of the project in partnership with Anduril and Palantir, two other defense tech companies also led by staunch Trump backers. SpaceX's vision for the satellite network reportedly envisions it as a 'subscription service,' in which the government would pay for access, rather than owning the system outright, a model that would presumably give Musk much more leverage over how Golden Dome is developed and deployed. Critics of the program charge that it is little more than a giveaway to Musk and his allies and Democratic members of Congress have raised concerns about his involvement. Advocates for the program, including the Heritage Foundation, which called for investments in ballistic and hypersonic missile defense in its Project 2025 document, have cited SpaceX's success with Starlink and Starshield as proof-of-concept for their argument that deploying a layer of hundreds or thousands of satellites for missile defense is more practical today than it was in the days of President Ronald Reagan's 'Star Wars' project. Even if Golden Dome could be effective, which many doubt, Trump's stated goal of having it operational with 'a success rate close to 100 percent' in 'less than three years' for around $175 billion (the Congressional Budget Office projects half a trillion dollars) is eyebrow-raising. The Pentagon had already backed away from the three-year timeline even before the president began feuding with the only person in the world who's built anything close to this. 'Even for SpaceX, it would be challenging,' said Burbach. 'I don't think any other company has the capability. They're really out in the lead on assembly line satellite capability.' Some experts think Golden Dome could be reconfigured with a greater role for land-based radar and interceptors, but this would almost certainly put it short of Trump's expansive vision. As nuclear expert Ankit Panda succinctly put it on Thursday, 'Golden Dome is cooked.' Is there an alternative? If anyone had a good day on Thursday, it was Musk's fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos. In January, Bezos's space company Blue Origin carried out its first successful launch of New Glenn, a reusable rocket meant to compete with SpaceX's game-changing Falcon for contracts including military launches. The company has also begun launching satellites for its Kuiper communications network, a potential competitor to Starlink. Both projects have suffered from long delays and have a long way to go to catch up with Musk's space behemoth, but it's still presumably good news for the company that their main competitor is no longer literally sleeping feet from the White House. Finding ways to at least encourage competition with Musk, if not cut him loose entirely, would likely have been a priority for a Kamala Harris administration, and may now be one for Trump as well. In response to Vox's questions to the White House about the future of SpaceX's contracts, spokesperson Karoline Leavitt responded in an emailed statement, 'President Trump is focused on making our country great again and passing the One Big Beautiful Bill.' SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.
Vox
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Vox
Ukraine hasn't won over Trump. But it might not need to.
is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He is the author of the 2018 book, Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood , an exploration of border conflicts, unrecognized countries, and changes to the world map. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky meets with President Donald Trump during Pope Francis's funeral on April 26, 2025, at St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican. Office of the President of Ukraine via Getty Images President Donald Trump's seemingly infinite patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin may, in fact, have limits. 'Something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY!' Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform this week, citing the massive recent airstrikes on Ukrainian cities and Putin's desire to conquer 'ALL of Ukraine, not just a piece of it.' Trump also took a vague shot at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ('everything out of his mouth causes problems'), and one could point out that Russia has been striking civilian targets in Ukraine and expressing a desire to snuff out Ukraine's political independence since the very beginning of the war. Trump followed up by telling reporters he is considering imposing new sanctions on Russia and posted, 'if it weren't for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia,' but told reporters at the White House on Wednesday that he is holding off on new sanctions for now. So it's not as if Trump has had a full and sudden change of heart overnight. But consider that, at the end of February, Trump was publicly dressing down Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, blaming Ukraine for starting the war, and halting all US assistance to the Ukrainian war effort. By that standard, Trump's new tone is still one of several developments that add up to a welcome change of pace for Kyiv. Today, Explained Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day, compiled by news editor Sean Collins. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Even if there are no new measures taken to either support Ukraine or punish Russia, and even if the US 'walks away' from efforts to negotiate a ceasefire, as Vice President JD Vance recently threatened, the events since February still amount to a remarkable diplomatic change of fortune for Ukraine — and probably about as good an outcome as Kyiv could reasonably expect from this administration. What hasn't changed: Sanctions, intelligence, and (so far) weapons For Ukraine, where cities are still reeling from some of the largest airstrikes since the beginning of the war, and where supplies of much-needed air defense ammunition are running dangerously low, there's obviously no cause for celebration. Hanna Shelest, a Kyiv-based defense analyst with the Center for European Policy Analysis, told Vox that despite Trump's changing tone on Putin, his ongoing attacks on Zelenskyy (it's unclear exactly what remarks triggered Trump's ire) indicate that 'we are still in a transactional situation. We have still not been able to dramatically change the approach of the US president.' Trump, for all his current frustration, clearly still views the conflict in a way that is much more sympathetic to Russia's interests than Joe Biden or many members of his own party. But in terms of actual material support, not much has actually changed since Trump took office. Because of the time it takes for those contracts to be negotiated and fulfilled, weapons that were ordered in 2022 are only being delivered now. He has frequently suggested he'd be willing to lift sanctions on Russia as part of a ceasefire agreement, but he has not done so, and in fact, has signed executive orders extending the sanctions that Biden imposed. Many of these sanctions could not be lifted without congressional approval. As Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently put it, 'When Vladimir Putin woke up this morning, he had the same set of sanctions on him that he's always had since the beginning of this conflict.' Aside from a week-long pause following the contentious Oval Office meeting, US weapons shipments to Ukraine have continued. In fact, the rate of weapons deliveries actually increased in the early weeks of the Trump administration because of moves the Biden team made to rush aid out the door before leaving office. The intelligence sharing vital to Ukraine's targeting systems has also continued, as has — despite Elon Musk's threats — the Ukrainian military's access to SpaceX's Starlink satellite network. Congress has allocated two types of funding for aid to Ukraine: The first pays for weapons to be transferred to Ukraine for US military stocks. That aid has been almost exhausted, experts say. The second provides funds for Ukraine to buy its own weapons from American manufacturers. Because of the time it takes for those contracts to be negotiated and fulfilled, weapons that were ordered in 2022 are only being delivered now. The last items from contracts signed in 2024 might not be delivered until 2028. The upshot, as Mark Cancian, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, puts it, is that 'the overall military aid being delivered is relatively high and will stay there for quite a while.' This White House and this Congress are very unlikely to allocate new funding for aid to Ukraine, but perhaps others could fill the gap. European governments are reportedly warming to the idea of purchasing weapons from American manufacturers. So far, these governments have preferred to buy from their own companies, but there are a number of systems — such as the all-important Patriot air-defense missiles — that only the US can provide. Ukraine's defense industry is also more self-sufficient than it used to be. The drones that are now inflicting the majority of the casualties on the front lines in Ukraine are increasingly produced in-country by the country's booming autonomous weapons industry. It's even possible that Ukraine may benefit somewhat from a more hands-off American approach. For all that the Biden team made clear it would back Ukraine's war effort for as long as it takes, Ukrainian officials sometimes bristled under what they saw as micromanagement from a White House concerned about the risks of conflict escalation with Russia, particularly when it came to long-range strikes into Russian territory. But according to an announcement from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz this week, allies including the United States have agreed to lift range restrictions on weapons headed to Ukraine, allowing the Ukrainians more freedom to strike targets deep within Russia. What has changed: Minerals and direct talks The two main shifts in US policy that have taken place under Trump have been the US-Ukraine minerals deal and the direct negotiations with Russia. Both have proven less disastrous for Ukraine than they initially appeared. The original version of the minerals deal presented to Ukraine reportedly required the country to hand over hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue from the mining of its critical minerals as repayment for past military aid. The deal Ukraine eventually signed drops that requirement and while it doesn't include the explicit security guarantees Ukraine was hoping for, it at least gives this transactionally minded administration a financial stake in Ukraine's future. As for the ongoing ceasefire talks, Trump overturned two oft-stated principles of the Biden approach: that Russia should be diplomatically isolated and that there would be no negotiations 'about Ukraine without Ukraine.' But ultimately, Ukraine's political position may have been strengthened by the process. Putin has rejected a proposed 30-day ceasefire after Ukraine agreed to one, was a no-show at talks in Istanbul, where Zelenskyy had proposed meeting face-to-face, and has rejected Trump's proposal to have talks mediated by the Vatican. It's much harder for even the most skeptical to argue, as Trump has previously, that the war is only continuing because of Zelenskyy's unwillingness to make a deal. Even Trump has been forced to wonder if Putin is merely 'tapping me along,' engaging minimally in the diplomatic process without abandoning his end goal of subjugating all of Ukraine, not just the disputed regions, by force. How long can the status quo hold? Trump has clearly moved on from the notion that he can end the war in 24 hours and seems to be losing interest in the peace talks entirely. Or as Vance put it, 'We're more than open to walking away.' Much depends on what exactly 'walking away' means. If it means an end to weapons shipments, intelligence sharing, and sanctions on Russia, that would be disastrous for Ukraine, though not necessarily fatal. 'It's not as if we pulled the plug tomorrow, that Ukrainians would just immediately cease to exist, which I think was the administration's assumption when they came in,' said Jeffrey Edmonds, a former White House and Pentagon Russia adviser. 'They thought they had a lot more leverage than they did over both Ukraine and Russia.' (A spokesperson for the White House national security council did not respond to Vox's request for comment.) If Trump merely maintains the status quo — keeps the sanctions that are already in place, continues shipping the weapons that have already been paid for — that might be enough for the Ukrainians to hold the line for at least the coming months. It's true that Russian troops continue to slowly advance, but the rate of advance is already slowing this year, and it loses dozens of casualties per square kilometer. According to one recent estimate, it would take Russia 80 years to conquer all of Ukraine's territory at the current rate. Ukraine's bigger concern may be recruiting enough troops to man the front lines, though its efforts have improved somewhat, US commanders say, and low morale among both troops and civilians as the war drags on with no end in sight. Russia has manpower woes as well as increasing signs of economic distress as it continues to pour money into Ukraine. Trump's tariffs have had the unexpected side-effect of slashing the Russian state's oil revenues.
Vox
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Vox
The return of the nuclear threat
is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He is the author of the 2018 book, Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood , an exploration of border conflicts, unrecognized countries, and changes to the world map. Humanity has lived with nuclear weapons for so long — 80 years, this year — without destroying itself, that we sometimes take them for granted. But there's no guarantee that our run of luck will continue. In fact, the risks are growing and transforming. The recent round of fighting between India and Pakistan, the most serious violence between the two nuclear rivals in decades, is a reminder that the risks of nuclear escalation have not disappeared. But that doesn't mean the risks are exactly the same as they used to be. The 'nuclear age,' can be divided into three parts: The first, from the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945 until the end of the Cold War, was characterized by arms build-ups and the ever-present threat of nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union. The second, a roughly 30-year period after the end of the Cold War, was marked by arms control agreements, a reduction in the threat of nuclear war, and new concerns like nuclear terrorism and proliferation to rogue regimes like North Korea. The third age is just beginning. In his new book, The New Nuclear Age: At the Precipice of Armageddon, leading nuclear security analyst Ankit Panda introduces readers to a new era that began in roughly the mid-2020s. This new era is characterized by renewed tensions between the world's superpowers, the emergence of China as a third major nuclear power, the collapse of Cold War-era arms control treaties, and new and potentially destabilizing technological developments like cyberwar and artificial intelligence. The war in Ukraine, the largest conventional war in decades and one that nuclear threats have loomed over from the start, was the most vivid illustration yet of the dynamics of this new era. In an interview with Vox, Panda, the Stanton senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a widely cited authority on all things nuclear, discussed the dynamics of our new nuclear world and how Donald Trump's return to the White House could raise nuclear risks. When nuclear weapons first appeared, leaders and experts expected that their use would just become routine. They'd be just another tool in the arsenal. That, thankfully, hasn't happened. So is there a case to be made that deterrence, the idea that countries will avoid using weapons because of the risks of retaliation, just works? Are leaders too afraid of the dangers of these weapons to actually use them, and maybe the risks of nuclear war aren't as high as we might think? I wouldn't go that far. The presence of nuclear weapons does induce a degree of caution in national leaders, militaries, and policymakers in general. But I consider myself something of a deterrence pessimist in that I believe deterrence is real, that it has the effects that its practitioners seek, but I'm not assured that deterrence itself can be rendered perfectly safe because rendering deterrence perfectly safe is something of an oxymoron. Deterrence is about the manipulation of useful risk. We endlessly debate what level of risk we should be willing to tolerate when it comes to the practice of nuclear deterrence, but we know from the Cold War that there have been instances of organizational failure and human miscalculation that easily could have led to the use of nuclear weapons. Ultimately, nuclear weapons are a human invention. Nuclear deterrence is an enterprise that requires the involvement of fallible, human organizations. Longer term, making sure that we keep nuclear weapons unused is going to require a lot more active tending of this incredibly complex enterprise that's growing a lot more complicated by the day. This past month, we saw a real-world demonstration of some of the dynamics you write about in the book, in the brief but very intense conflict between India and Pakistan, two nuclear rivals. What do you think that incident tells us about how crises like this are likely to play out in this new nuclear age? I think we can describe what we saw last week between India and Pakistan as the first South Asian nuclear crisis of this third nuclear range. Both countries have tried to rewrite the rules of their mutual coexistence under the nuclear shadow. [Indian Prime Minister Narendra] Modi's government has for years been interested in calling Pakistan's 'nuclear bluff.' It wanted to find ways to inflict punishment on the Pakistanis with military force for what India perceives as state-backed terror, and it did exactly that. I think it's fair to say that what we saw was the most intense multidomain, air-to-air and air-to-ground engagement between two nuclear-armed countries ever. We've never seen anything like this in the nuclear age. Does that imply that India is simply no longer afraid of Pakistan's nuclear deterrent or no longer takes it seriously? India has taken steps to avoid escalation with Pakistan in the past, in part because of nuclear fears, but Modi said in his speech following the end of this most recent conflict that India would no longer give in to what he called 'nuclear blackmail.' I argue in my book that what we call nuclear blackmail is actually just nuclear deterrence. We're simply applying a value judgment to the deterrer: In this case Pakistan, but it's also how Vladimir Putin's nuclear signaling is described in European and American commentary about the war in Ukraine. When it comes to Pakistan's nuclear signaling, it had several audiences. One was, of course, the Indians, and I think this crisis perhaps told the Pakistanis that some of the older assumptions they might have retained about the ways in which India would be deterred are no longer sufficient. The second is the United States. This is what really gave me concern in the early days of the crisis. Traditionally, we in the United States have seen a pressing national interest in preventing India and Pakistan from getting into direct clashes, but this is a very different Washington, and based on the statements from the administration, it wasn't clear that the US saw it as in its interest to get involved. But then whatever the US saw in its intelligence reports changed that pretty quickly. So initially, you saw JD Vance coming out and saying this is none of our business, then very soon after was working the phones with the Indian prime minister. I suspect what we saw was the Pakistanis beginning to either talk about moving their nuclear weapons around or actually moving nuclear weapons around in a way that convinced the United States that, if the escalation continued, we could end up in a place where things could get really ugly. I think we saw that we still have an interest in not seeing the nuclear taboo broken anywhere in the world. And I think even if your worldview is that we should be placing America first, that interest doesn't fundamentally change. Over the past few weeks, we've seen more non-nuclear countries talk about whether they should get their own weapons. Several countries in Europe are talking about it. There's a very active debate in South Korea. Do you think we could see more countries going nuclear in a world where US security guarantees seem a little less ironclad than they used to? The United States has played a vital, I would argue, load-bearing function in global non-proliferation, by virtue of extending its own nuclear defense to a long list of countries around the world. There's more than 50 countries to which the United States extends assurances that it will use all of its military capabilities, including nuclear weapons if necessary, to defend these allies. I should emphasize that these allies, at no moment, really have been perfectly assured. This is fundamentally a promise that the United States makes that's very difficult to render fully credible. We're essentially telling non-nuclear countries, including some that share borders with countries like China — like North Korea, like Russia — that we would be willing to run the risk of nuclear war on their behalf. And that sounds a little crazy, and from the perspective of our allies, that's part of the reason why they've been very skittish, historically, about the statements our national leaders make. So, as we sort of live through the first few months of the second Trump administration, for the first time since the end of the Cold War, the level of interest among many allies of the United States in acquiring nuclear weapons is higher than it has been in decades. Again, not everything about this new nuclear age is new. During the Cold War, we did have prominent concerns from allies about these very same issues. The West Germans wanted nuclear weapons. The South Koreans had a covert nuclear program that the United States put in the box in the late 1970s. So we've been here before. But, of course, today, the kinds of dynamics we're seeing now are fundamentally a lot more serious. Because I would argue that the United States is currently in the process of relitigating its entire grand strategy. It is rethinking the role that it sees for itself in the international system and its relationship to long-standing alliances. So this increases the pull of nuclear weapons [for some countries]. Now, does this mean that nuclear proliferation is preordained in the 21st century and the third nuclear age? I don't think so. I think for a variety of very good reasons, allies will be very careful about how they choose to proceed, even if they have a national conversation about whether nuclear weapons potentially answer some of the sources of insecurity they currently perceive. Even if they answer that question in the affirmative, there's a second question that they then have to ask, which is, well, how do we get them, and what would the costs be? That is where things start to get a lot more complicated. What do you think is going to be the lasting legacy of the war in Ukraine on the nuclear weapons front? On the one hand, we've seen the threat of nuclear weapons brandished by Vladimir Putin in a really alarming way. On the other hand, the fact that nuclear weapons haven't been used, shows that deterrence and the taboos against their use are still at least partly in effect, right? I mean, my book exists because of the Ukraine war. I think the Ukraine war has been the biggest wake-up call, [showing] that we have arrived in this new nuclear era where we, once again, need to think about the possibility of global nuclear conflict. It's not that we live in the world of the Cold War, where we are worried about massive nuclear exchanges or first-strike scenarios. I think the most likely scenario leading to nuclear use today would be a conventional war or a crisis that either directly implicates the nuclear-armed states or implicates their national interests in a way that's likely to draw them into a conflict. I think Ukraine is the first conflict, in many ways, of this new nuclear age, in that it has definitely tested many of our beliefs about nuclear deterrence and has really revealed the opportunities and limitations with deterrence. Deterrence has been beneficial for both NATO and Russia in seeking their political ends: Russia to carry out its conventional war, NATO to support Ukraine militarily. Both Russia and NATO have respected fundamental red lines as they perceive them on the other side, but at the same time, each party has been frustrated with its ability to fully implement its plans. If Russia were more successful with its nuclear threats, NATO wouldn't be in the position where it ended up supplying Ukraine and ensuring that Ukraine could put up an effective conventional military resistance. Similarly, NATO hasn't been able to implement a no-fly zone over Ukraine or put its own boots on the ground. So deterrence doesn't solve all your problems, but it certainly is an important factor in shaping the modern battlefield between nuclear-armed countries and their patrons. When it comes to the current administration, Donald Trump has made several comments about how seriously he takes the threat of nuclear war, and he's even proposed 'denuclearization' talks with China and Russia. But do you see any signs that this kind of talk is actually being turned into policy? I don't see a big policy push on arms control or even nuclear policy matters. The Trump administration, for the moment, doesn't appear to be deeply interested in questions of nuclear policy, and so things are really just on autopilot from where the Biden administration left off. That said, Donald Trump certainly has spoken about nuclear weapons quite a bit. He's cited them as an existential threat to humanity. He's pointed out on multiple occasions that he sees nuclear war as a greater threat to mankind than climate change. And he has said for decades that he does have an interest in something resembling arms control. In the 1980s, he even said that one of his greatest dreams of life was to negotiate an arms control agreement. So I do think as a second-term president, he does appear to be more concerned with matters pertaining to his personal legacy. I think that explains some of what we've seen with regard to talk of, for instance, territorial conquest of Canada, Greenland, and Panama, and so we might see a similar impulse as he tries to renormalize relations with Russia, to broach the topic of arms control. Now the risk here is, of course, that the Russians will be a lot better prepared. I think the Russians have a policy process at the moment that will lead to them having a much clearer sense of what they would want to ask of the United States in that arms control negotiation. Arms control has always been a means to advance national security. It hasn't been an end in itself. During the first Trump administration, Trump did authorize his envoys to try to seek arms control breakthroughs with both Russia and China. It just so happened that at the time, neither country really saw a national interest-based case for engaging with the United States in good faith on arms control. So it's possible that we get arms control. It just might not be the kind of arms control agreement that would advance US or allied national interests. Next year, we're going to see the expiration of New START, the last significant treaty putting limits on the size of the US and Russian nuclear arsenal. What happens after that? Could we see the kind of arms build-ups we saw during the Cold War again? The idea that we're going back to a world of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons is just not consistent with the current state of the nuclear enterprise. It would just be incredibly costly. But what I think the end of New START will mark is the formal arrival of a more dangerous, multipolar nuclear era to which the United States will look to respond, and there's a really active debate about how it will respond. One of the fundamental changes for the United States, in particular, but also for American allies and even non-ally countries like India, is the remarkable shift that we've seen in China's approach. We don't understand exactly why that change has happened, but the change is that China has moved from a nuclear force that for decades remained fairly low in terms of numbers to a nuclear force that the US intelligence community now estimates will potentially reach 1,500 warheads by the mid 2030s. That's still less than the current deployed nuclear force that the United States and Russia maintain under new START. But the question for the United States if you're looking at Russia as well as China, as well as a North Korea that probably is soon going to have as many warheads as China did at the start of the start of the 2020s, is whether the US might need more tools in its nuclear to \olkit. This, I think, is going to be the fundamental question for the Trump administration. There are realistic things the US could do, like it could put additional nuclear warheads on intercontinental missiles and submarine-launched missiles that, for arms control reasons, largely have deployed for a number of years with less than the total number of warheads they can accommodate. But if Russia and China determined that the US response to this new environment will require them to also make adjustments to their own nuclear postures, we end up in an arms race, and we end up in a world where we face greater nuclear dangers because all three of the major nuclear powers will see incentives to posture their nuclear and conventional forces in more dangerous ways. It certainly seems, as you note in the book, that despite the growing dangers, nuclear weapons are still not as prominent in our political debates or the culture (Oppenheimer notwithstanding) as they were in the Cold War. Certainly, younger generations don't have the same visceral experience with this as those who lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis or the 1980s arms build-ups did. Do we, as Americans, particularly younger Americans, need to be more worried about nukes? For me, I lived in India in 1998, the year India tested a nuclear weapon. The next year, in 1999, India and Pakistan fought a war in the nuclear shadow. And so, I'm a millennial, but that gives me a perspective that's not too common in the United States or in the West. I think millennials and Gen Z, these generations that have come of age in largely peaceful and prosperous Western countries in the aftermath of the Cold War, will need to wrap their heads around this really important source of catastrophic risk for humanity. There's a fine line between being alarmist and trying to inform the public, and I hope my book walks that tightrope appropriately. It's not that, you know, I think we all need to run around with our hair on fire about global thermonuclear war breaking out at any moment, but the message for future generations is that nuclear weapons very much deserve our attention, especially in democracies where citizens vote for their lawmakers and for their national leaders. In the United States, when it comes to matters of nuclear war, the president has absolute authority. There's not a second center of decision-making. The greatest way we could actually mitigate some of these risks is to have more conscientious national leaders.
Vox
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Vox
Why Trump's biggest global allies aren't very happy with him
is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He is the author of the 2018 book, Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood , an exploration of border conflicts, unrecognized countries, and changes to the world map. Is President Donald Trump leading a vanguard of right-wing populist world leaders, working together to lay waste to the liberal international order while consolidating power at home? Possibly — but based on his recent foreign policy actions, he doesn't appear to think so. Establishment-bashing politicians around the world, from Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro to the Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte to the UK's Boris Johnson, have drawn comparisons to Trump over the years. Some, notably Hungary's Viktor Orbán and Argentina's Javier Milei, have cultivated ties to the Trump-era American right, becoming fixtures at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and making the rounds on US talk shows and podcasts. In Romania's recent presidential election, the leading right-wing candidate somewhat confusingly described himself as being on the 'MAGA ticket.' Trump himself has occasionally weighed in on other countries' political debates to endorse right-wing politicians like France's embattled far-right leader Marine Le Pen. Some of Trump's senior officials have spoken openly of wanting to build ties with the global right. In his combative speech at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year, Vice President JD Vance described what he sees as the unfair marginalization of right-wing parties in countries like Romania and Germany as a greater threat to Europe's security than China or Russia. Trump ally Elon Musk has been even more active in boosting far-right parties in elections around the world. But just because Trump and his officials like to see politicians and parties in their own mold win, that doesn't mean countries led by those politicians and parties can count on any special treatment from the Trump administration. This has been especially clear in recent weeks. Today, Explained Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day, compiled by news editor Sean Collins. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Just ask Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has spent years cultivating close ties with the US Republican Party, and with Trump in particular, and has followed a somewhat similar path in bringing previously marginalized far-right partners into the mainstream. All that has been of little use as Trump has left his Israeli supporters aghast by carrying out direct negotiations with the likes of Hamas, the Houthis, and Iran and being feted by Gulf monarchs on a Middle East tour that pointedly did not include Israel. India's Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, has likewise been compared to Trump in his populist appeal, majoritarian rhetoric, and dismantling of democratic norms. Trump has cultivated a massive coterie of fans among Hindu nationalist Modi supporters as well as a close working relationship with Modi himself. But after Trump announced a ceasefire agreement in the recent flare-up of violence between India and Pakistan, Trump enraged many of his Indian supporters with remarks that appeared to take credit for pressuring India to halt its military campaign and drew equivalence between the Indian and Pakistani positions. Adding insult to injury, Trump publicly criticized Apple for plans to move the assembly of American iPhones from China to India, a move that in other administrations might have been praised as a victory for 'friendshoring' — moving the production of critical goods from adversaries to allies — but doesn't advance Trump's goal of returning industrial manufacturing to the US. Even Orbán, star of CPAC and favorite guest of Tucker Carlson, has appeared frustrated with Trump as of late. His government has described its close economic relationship with China as a 'red line,' vowing not to decouple its economy from Beijing's, no matter what pressure Trump applies. Orbán's simultaneous position as the most pro-Trump and most pro-China leader in Europe is looking increasingly awkward. Overall, there's simply little evidence that political affinity guides Trump's approach to foreign policy, a fact made abundantly clear by the 'Liberation Day' tariffs the president announced in April. Taking just Latin America, for example, Argentina — led by the floppy-haired iconoclast and Musk favorite Javier Milei — and El Salvador — led by Nayib Bukele, a crypto-loving authoritarian willing to turn his country's prisons into an American gulag — might have expected exemptions from the tariffs. But they were hit with the same tariff rates as leftist-led governments like Colombia and Brazil. Ultimately, it's not the leaders who see eye to eye with Trump on migration, the rule of law, or wokeness who seem to have his fear. It's the big-money monarchs of the Middle East, who can deliver the big deals and quick wins he craves.
Vox
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Vox
Trump's surprising new approach to Israel
is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He is the author of the 2018 book, Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood , an exploration of border conflicts, unrecognized countries, and changes to the world map. What's the opposite of a 'bear hug'? That was the phrase often used to describe President Joe Biden's approach to Israel since the October 7, 2023 attacks: publicly and enthusiastically backing Israel, particularly when it comes to its wider regional conflict with Iran and its proxies, while quietly trying to restrain Israel's actions in Gaza. Now President Donald Trump is traveling through the Middle East this week for a multi-country tour and dealmaking bonanza that pointedly does not include a stop in Israel. (Trump has denied the snub, saying his trip is 'very good for Israel.') The trip is the latest example of how Trump's approach to the country often seems like a mirror image of his predecessor's: he has little interest in restraining or pressuring Israel on its war in Gaza, but perhaps even less interest in supporting Israel on wider regional issues or aligning the two countries' approach to the region. Today, Explained Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day, compiled by news editor Sean Collins. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. This is still an administration that is fiercely 'pro-Israel' in rhetoric and in its willingness to punish Israel's critics in America. But in practice, as he conducts his foreign policy, Trump seems remarkably unconcerned about what Israel has to say about it. 'The one message that's consistent [from Trump] is 'I have plans for the region. You're welcome to be a partner, but if you prefer to be ignored, go ahead,'' said Nimrod Novik, former foreign policy adviser to the late Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. This is not the Trump Israel was expecting When Trump was reelected last November, the response from the Israeli government was near rapturous. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had an often fraught relationship with Biden's administration, praised Trump for 'history's greatest comeback' and predicted a 'powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America.' It's not hard to figure out why Netanyahu was so optimistic. During his first term, Trump, who often describes himself as the most pro-Israel president in history, took a number of precedent-smashing steps to demonstrate that support, including moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, which is not considered the country's capital by most of the international community, and recognizing Israel's sovereignty over the disputed Golan Heights. His first term included the Abraham Accords — a series of deals, mediated by the United States, normalizing relations between Israel and a number of Arab countries — as well as the scrapping of President Barack Obama's Iran nuclear deal, loathed by Netanyahu's government. Even by the standards of the US-Israel relationship, Trump's approach stood out for its unconditional support. There were early indications that the second term would bring more of the same. For his ambassador to Israel, Trump picked Mike Huckabee, a Christian Zionist whose views on Israeli-Palestinian issues would put him on the far right even in Israeli politics. One of Trump's most notable domestic initiatives so far has been a widespread crackdown on universities and activists over last year's anti-Israel protests. Nor has his White House engaged in much Biden-style soul-searching about Palestinian civilian casualties in Gaza: Trump quickly lifted the limited restrictions on arms exports to Israel and sanctions on violent West Bank settlers that Biden had put in place. His suggestion that Gaza be 'cleaned out' of its Palestinian inhabitants to make room for a resort was received ecstatically by the Israeli far right. But when it comes to the Middle East, writ large, it's been a different story. Trump seems remarkably unconcerned about appearing to be on the same page as the Israelis in his approach to the region, and has repeatedly negotiated directly with Israel's main adversaries while cutting Israel out entirely. In early March, Axios reported that Trump's envoy for hostage affairs, Adam Boehler, had been negotiating with Hamas over the release of American hostages — without coordinating with Israel, and breaking a longstanding precedent of the US refraining from direct talks with the terrorist group. The news created a firestorm of controversy and Boehler was removed from the talks, but just this week, Hamas agreed to release the last surviving American hostage, Edan Alexander. The negotiations that led to the release, led by Trump's all-purpose foreign envoy Steve Witkoff, reportedly came after Hamas reached out via an 'Arab Americans for Trump' group. Israel learned about the talks not from the White House, but from its own intelligence services. It was not the only surprise Netanyahu has gotten recently. During an Oval Office meeting with the prime minister last month, Trump dropped the surprise announcement that he was dispatching Witkoff and other negotiators to begin direct talks with Iran over its nuclear program. Netanyahu, who learned of the talks only after arriving in Washington, DC, has pushed the US to insist on a complete dismantlement of Iran's nuclear program. But officials including the secretary of state and vice president have suggested they might be open to Iran maintaining some type of civilian nuclear program — effectively returning to a similar framework to the one Trump tore up in 2018. And while Israel welcomed Trump's decision in March to step up the US air campaign against the Houthis, the Yemeni militant group that has been firing missiles and drones at Israel as well as ships traveling through the Red Sea since the start of the Gaza war, Trump abruptly announced an end to the bombing earlier this month. He said he had received assurances from the Houthis that they would refrain from attacking US ships. (The rate at which the campaign was burning through American money and munitions also probably played a role.) Trump's announcement made no mention of Israel, even though the Houthis had attacked Tel Aviv's airport days earlier. The message was unmistakable: Israel could deal with the Houthis on their own. All in all, the Trump administration has been in direct talks with three of Israel's main adversaries — Hamas, Iran, and the Houthis — to cut deals without Israel's input, a nearly unprecedented situation according to longtime observers of relations between the two countries. 'I don't think there's an administration, Democrat or Republican, that has even come close to undertaking the sort independent outreach that the Trump administration has now contrived over the course of the last three months,' said Aaron David Miller, a veteran Mideast peace negotiator who served in several US administrations. A changing GOP meets a changing Middle East What explains the new frostiness in the US-Israel relationship? One answer may be that Trump is simply growing frustrated with Netanyahu. If there's one consistent theme in Trump's worldview, it's skepticism about allies that, as he sees it, take more from America than they give. During his Oval Office meeting with Netanyahu, Trump brushed aside a suggestion that he should lift tariffs on Israel, saying 'We give Israel $4 billion a year. That's a lot. Congratulations, by the way.' Some Trump critics in the US have been crediting him for his approach to the relationship. The New York Times' Thomas Friedman praised the president for realizing that 'Netanyahu is not our friend,' while former Bernie Sanders foreign policy adviser Matt Duss credited him with handling 'Netanyahu more effectively than alleged foreign policy expert Joe Biden did.' Netanyahu himself is probably not the only factor here. The second Trump term has also seen the rise in influence of the so-called 'restrainer' wing of Republican foreign policy, who want to reduce America's military footprint abroad, especially in the Middle East, at the expense of traditional hawks. While not uniformly anti-Israel (though some outside Trump allies like Tucker Carlson would probably qualify), the restrainers are much less inclined to think that US and Israeli interests are aligned. Vice President JD Vance, for instance, has stated that while Israel has a right to defend itself, he doesn't believe the US should be drawn into a war with Iran. Trump's speech in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, which included pointed shots at 'neocons' and 'nation builders,' may have been an indication of which faction is winning the battle for influence. And according to reporting by the Washington Post, former national security adviser Mike Waltz, one of Trump's most traditionally hawkish advisers, was fired in early May in part because of Trump's anger that Waltz had been in communication with the Israeli government about using military force against Iran. This is also not the same Middle East that Trump dealt with last time around. Israel isn't the only longstanding US ally getting snubbed on Trump's trip; previous presidents might have been expected to make a stop in Egypt or Jordan. But Trump is making a beeline for the Gulf, home of lucrative arms and computer chip deals, not to mention golf resorts and free 747s. During Trump's first term, the Saudis and Emiratis were more or less aligned with the US and Israel on wider regional security matters — namely, the perceived danger posed by Iran. This was the context that made the Emiratis' recognition of Israel in the Abraham Accords possible. This time, when Trump sits down with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the UAE's Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, he's likely to hear a different story. The Saudis and Iranians have reached a detente, and both Gulf countries have tried to extricate themselves from the long and brutal conflict with the Houthis in Yemen. Both now support a deal with Iran that would avoid war, and both supported an end to the US campaign against the Houthis. They're also increasingly frustrated with Israel's war in Gaza and the anger it has provoked throughout the region, including in their own populations. The scenes coming out of Gaza have raised the costs of appearing to be aligned with Israel. 'Both MBS and MBZ have his respect. He listens to them,' said Novik, now a fellow at the Israel Policy Forum, of the Saudi and Emirati leaders. 'They believe that what happens in Gaza doesn't stay in Gaza. It's destabilizing the region, and that's bad for business.' All indications are that Trump is these days more interested in what he calls the 'gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi' than the winding streets of Jerusalem. A case in point: both the first Trump administration and the Biden team sought a major regional deal that would tie US nuclear or security cooperation with Saudi Arabia to Saudi recognition of Israel. Though Trump is still calling for the Saudis — who have never recognized the Jewish state — to normalize relations, his team has reportedly dropped it as a demand for US-Saudi nuclear cooperation. If this comes to pass, it would effectively be giving up on what would be the crown jewel of the Abraham Accords process. A hands-off stance on Gaza All this is a dramatic shift, but it's certainly not the change that critics of Biden's support for Israel were hoping for. Trump has iced out the Israelis on regional diplomacy just as Israel is considering a plan for an 'intensive escalation' of its military operations in Gaza. This could include the destruction of most of the enclave's remaining buildings and and would give civilians a choice between moving to a tiny 'humanitarian area' or leaving — though it's not clear what countries would be willing to accept them if they did. Related Americans have tuned out Gaza at the worst possible moment Trump and his senior officials have not spoken out publicly about the plan and, according to Axios' reporting, have 'effectively given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a green light to do as he sees fit.' Israeli officials say the operation will begin if there is no ceasefire and hostage deal by the end of Trump's visit to the region this week, though there are few indications that Trump is actively involved in pushing for one. It seems unlikely that Trump would employ pressure tactics that Biden was unwilling to use, such as conditioning military aid or addressing the Israeli public directly about the war.
