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If Trump continues to withhold the latest arms package, it will draw a new red line that benefits Beijing.

To understand Trump’s approach to Ukraine, Iran, and China, look to Richard Nixon. The president’s instinct for superpower dealmaking reflects a hard-nosed realism, backed by the American economy. Each episode of the satirical 1970s show Soap always began with a convoluted plot summary. The catchphrase in the intro was: “Confused? You won’t be.” Confused is how many people today feel about U.S. foreign policy. A Free Press editor recently put it this way: If China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran are an Axis of Aggressors and we’re at war with them, why is it so hard to identify enemies and allies? Democrats who just voted to pass almost $2 billion in aid to Ukraine (with an assist from a small group of Republicans) are simultaneously promoting candidates who want to end support for the Iron Dome for Israel, which is at war with Iran and its satellites, who are attacking an assortment of our partial allies and getting help from Russia and China. [Vice President] J.D. Vance talked about the moderates in Iran who want peace during his ill-fated ceasefire; Turkey works with the Axis but is part of NATO; France, Belgium, Spain, and the Netherlands import Russian gas; Hungary uses a Russian pipeline, etc. How can we be in “Cold War II” if those are our allies? Whose false narrative are we living in? Having coined the phrase Cold War II and encouraged the use of the term Axis, I get so much of this kind of thing these days that I feel like a geopolitical agony aunt. “Why is Musk fucking with Ukraine?” a friend messaged me on Wednesday, referring to reports that Elon Musk green-lit a slowdown in the military-grade Starlink coverage that Ukraine relies on for certain types of drones. “Why would Putin negotiate when he’s getting concessions without it? How does increasing his leverage help?” These questions were further fueled by the revelation at the beginning of the week that the Russian president had proposed a joint summit next month with Donald Trump and Xi Jinping to discuss Ukraine—without Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky present. Trump reportedly did not reject the idea. Confused? You will be. So how to make sense of the apparent contradictions of Cold War II? For some people, the only possible explanation for all of this is that President Donald Trump is simply a crazed man-child emperor. In the wake of the gladiatorial games staged outside the White House in June, the British writer Robert Harris (whose new book Agrippa depicts the rise of Augustus Caesar) remarked: “You can really see him in a toga with a gold laurel wreath on his head. . . . He is an imperial kind of president.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he and President Trump are trying to convince a reluctant Chinese government to join three-way talks with the United States and Russia on nuclear arms.

China has started preparations for a potential first three-way meeting between the leaders of Russia, the US and China next month, according to the Kremlin’s top foreign policy aide.

Voters across the country in this year’s midterm elections will decide on ballot initiatives to slow down development or issue guardrails for data centers, which have seen sharply increasing public backlash. President Donald Trump has pushed for data center development, arguing they are necessary in order to win the artificial intelligence race against China. However, […]

The straight-talking PM’s ability to manage Trump and stand up to China have endeared her to the public, but she may need friends closer to home to survive The visitors squeezed into the kiosk near Japan ’s national diet building snap up souvenirs bearing the face of Sanae-chan, the affectionate nickname for the country’s leader: chocolate biscuits, dango sweets, stickers and document files proclaiming that “Japan is back”. “The Takaichi range is incredibly popular,” says a member of staff. Continue reading...

Mara Rudman, senior fellow at the University of Virginia's Miller Center and former US State Department official, said that one of the challenges facing the United States is that President Trump sees himself as 'part of the club' of leaders including Putin and Xi. Rudman said that countries like Iran, China and Russia are looking to 'maximize the opportunities' they have to create instability during the US midterm elections and the presidential election in Israel. (Source: Bloomberg)