Anchorage is not dead, and Budapest is still alive. Between the Trump-Putin meeting in Anchorage Alaska and the proposed Trump-Putin meeting in Budapest, the diplomatic track that the United States and Russia were on seemed to die. In October, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin had a “very productive” two hour phone call that led to a phone call between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov that was to lay the groundwork for a meeting between Trump and Putin in Budapest. But, by the time Rubio had hung up the phone, the Budapest meeting was off....

There is much of significance happening in Ukraine right now that is being reported either lightly or not at all by the mainstream Western media in an apparent attempt to harmonize their reporting with Kiev’s narrative in order to keep hopes high and economic and military support flowing. Though the mainstream media has begun to report on the Russian encirclement of the Donetsk city of Pokrovsk, it is failing to report on how dire and how ominous the situation is. The reporting suggests that the battlefield situation is being stabilized, that the Russian losses are enormous, and that the...

In the waters of the Caribbean, a surprisingly large U.S. fleet sits with Venezuela in its sights. It includes over 10,000 troops, Aegis guided-missile destroyers, a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine, F-35B jet fighters, MQ-9 Reaper drones, P-8 Poseidon spy planes, assault ships, and a secretive special-operations ship. The fleet is built for war on Venezuela or its drug cartels, but it is engineered to put enough pressure on Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro to push him from power. The justification for the war is stopping the flow of drugs into the United States by Venezuelan drug...

Reporting has recently emerged that the United States is considering direct strikes on Venezuela that could increase volatility in the region and the risk of war. Under the pretext of disrupting the flow of drugs into the United States by Venezuelan drug cartels, the U.S. has militarized the waters off the coast of Venezuela, flooding them with Aegis guided-missile destroyers, a nuclear-powered fast track submarine, P-8 spy planes and F-35 fighter jets. On September 2, American forces fired on a small speed boat that the U.S. claims was running drugs for a Venezuelan cartel. The Donald Trump...

While on the campaign trail, Donald Trump promised he could end the war in Ukraine within twenty-four hours of being elected and before he even arrives in office. Peace has proven more difficult. Blame has frequently shifted from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Russian President Vladimir Putin and back. But as a settlement has become more and more elusive, blame has begun to fall on more unusual suspects. At the end of August, Axios reported that “[s]ome U.S. officials have begun to see European leaders as a major obstacle.” While the United States and Europe have been partners in...

By President Donald Trump’s transactional criterion, NATO has been a costly failure that needs fixing or needs to be cut lose. Europe has failed to pay the price and has left the United States with the financial and military burden of defending Europe. The war in Ukraine has proven the point. But that was never the point of NATO. The point of NATO was never economic nor transactional. The point of NATO was, in large part, to keep Europe militarily coordinated with, dependent on and subordinate to the United States. The point wasn’t to extricate the U.S. from Europe, it was, as Lord Ismay,...

U.S. tariffs wear the cloak of financial policy to address trade imbalances, but they mask deeper geopolitical ambitions. That strategy may backfire. The pressure of U.S. tariffs is firming up the multipolar world it is meant to prevent. Pressure from sanctions has already fused Iran even tighter with Russia and Saudi Arabia. It is now, stunningly, contributing to the birth of relations with Egypt, a Middle Eastern power with whom Iran has had broken relations since 1979. In 2024, Iran and Egypt both became members of BRICS, a large and growing international organization whose primary...

The war with Russia is going very badly for Ukraine. At the beginning of July, the Russian armed forces took full control of the Luhansk region for the first time. And, though it is too early to tell if they will hold it, there are now unconfirmed reports that the Ukrainian front line defending Pokrovsk has collapsed and that the Russian army has broken through, rapidly advancing 6-10 kilometers and cutting Ukraine’s supply lines. There are now even unconfirmed reports that Russian forces have entered Pokrovsk, which, if true, is a severe strategic setback for Ukraine. But Ukrainians must...