Why Munich 1938 concessions to Nazi Germany haunt Washington 2025 talks

“Vladimir Putin’s desire to grab Ukraine’s key defensive lines echoes how Adolf Hitler secured Czechoslovakia’s fortifications.

“Ukraine has spent the last 11 years pouring time, money and effort into reinforcing the fortress belt and establishing significant defense industrial and defensive infrastructure in and around these cities,” the institute said.

If that happens, Russia would move its frontline roughly 80 kilometers further west, while Ukraine would be forced to build new defenses on flat and open terrain in neighboring Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk — far harder to hold than the fortified cities it controls now.

In September 1938, Adolf Hitler argued that handing over the ethnic-German majority Sudetenland region to the Reich would satisfy his ambitions and end the threat of war in Europe. France and Britain agreed, and browbeat Prague into accepting. Hitler — whose word was as reliable as Putin’s — said he had no further territorial ambitions.”

https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-russia-war-in-ukraine-adolf-hitler-czechoslovakia/

Jonathan Conricus says Hamas would win “by a landslide” in new election — Sky News Australia

Countries recognizing a Palestinian state while Hamas is in power helps cement their power because Hamas can claim that their strategy worked. Their strategy of terrorist attacks and using their people as human shields worked to get the Palestinian state recognized by more countries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYQkD_vkxRE

Trump’s Caucasus ‘peace corridor’ explained

The Trump administration made a potentially good deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan wants a corridor to its territory that is separated by Armenia. Armenia would consider such a corridor an infringement of its sovereignty. Both sides agreed to let the U.S. and private companies manage the corridor while it remains Armenian territory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzA3CFdEiMM

The Art of the Empty Trade Deal

“The Trump administration claims its tariffs are drawing countries to the table for tough negotiations. Yet in 2016, TPP partners were already there, ready to sign an agreement that closely reflected U.S. trade standards and practices, having overcome significant domestic hurdles. The TPP’s multilateral negotiating framework actually provided an efficient mechanism for participating countries to modernize their existing bilateral free trade agreements, and it augmented less comprehensive pacts like NAFTA and the Korea-U.S. agreement (KORUS).

The White House claims its new trade deal with Japan pushed “breakthrough openings” in agriculture and food, but the real groundwork was laid a decade earlier, when Shinzo Abe took on Japan’s powerful farm lobby in 2015, clearing the path for the TPP and softening resistance to liberalized agricultural trade. The TPP would have covered virtually all goods, including politically sensitive products like Japanese rice.

The 2025 deal also hardly qualifies as a “free trade deal,” with imports from Japan into the U.S. still subject to a 15 percent reciprocal tariff rate. Those tariffs are a tax on American businesses and consumers.

The TPP, by contrast, was slated to roll back 18,000 individual tariffs, making it “the largest tax cut on American exports in a generation.”

Building trade policy on headline‑driven, ad hoc bargains is an unstable strategy—made more precarious when the very tariffs they hinge on rest on contested executive authority. These arrangements may create the illusion of momentum, but without enforceable commitments or structural durability, they offer little of the stability that comprehensive trade agreements provide. The TPP demonstrated how a well‑designed pact could lock in reforms, deepen alliances, and shape the rules of global commerce for decades. Washington’s drift toward improvisation risks ceding that ground to others who are willing to play the long game—and win it.”

https://reason.com/2025/08/07/the-art-of-the-empty-trade-deal/

For Ukraine, ‘Losing Slowly’ Might Be a Winning Strategy

“Day by day, meter by meter, the Russian front rolls ever westward. More than a million casualties in, Russia’s general staff shows no sign of slackening; indeed, it is currently increasing pressure across the eastern front. Far-away analysts talk of “frozen” frontlines and “static” positions, but the truth is that the frontlines are a cauldron of combat activity, with Ukrainians fighting frantically to slow the creeping red tide. And yet, demoralizing as all this might seem, this steady loss holds the key to a potential triumph.

Losing as slowly as possible—husbanding one’s manpower and resources during a careful strategic retreat—is a time-tested strategy against an ostensibly superior force.

the slow retreat strategy only works if the enemy eventually breaks—either militarily, economically, or politically.”

https://reason.com/2025/08/11/for-ukraine-losing-slowly-might-be-a-winning-strategy/

The data is in: Many Canadians are still avoiding travel to the US

“Canadian travel to the United States by car has declined for seven consecutive months.

Canadians have said they are boycotting travel to the United States in response to Trump’s policies.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/data-many-canadians-still-avoiding-003056944.html