“sanctions have never made the clerical regime abandon its nuclear ambitions. During Trump’s first term, his “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign did real damage to Iran’s economy. Iran didn’t, however, concede its atomic assets.”
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” Obama’s more friendly outreach only made progress after Washington made a key concession — Iran’s “right” to enrich uranium. The Americans also made a second key concession: allowing Iran to retain a substantial nuclear infrastructure, which could ramp back up at any time. Ali Salehi, the MIT-educated nuclear engineer who was probably the mastermind behind Iran’s dual-use import network, loved the Obama agreement because it would guarantee the Islamic Republic a more advanced, better-financed atomic program that it could grow in the open. It was Obama’s permissive terms much more than the promised financial relief that induced the theocracy to sign the 2015 accord.”
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” Along the way, the clerical regime might agree to dilute its stock of 60 percent-enriched uranium, which is near weapons-grade, or even cap enrichment at a lower level. It would be a flashy concession that won’t fundamentally affect the complexion or the trajectory of Tehran’s nuclear program. The mullahs know that what matters most are protecting its new generation of centrifuges. With much greater efficiency and speed, these machines can enrich uranium to bomb-grade and can be housed in small facilities that are harder to detect.”
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“Even a stringent inspection regime, unless supported by a well-placed human-intelligence network, would find locating these centrifuges an excruciatingly difficult task.”
“in his second term he appears to be in the business of exerting American power abroad, from Greenland to Gaza. But no modern empire has ever successfully projected power globally without a competent and motivated bureaucracy. The late Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington wrote that the more complex a society becomes, the more it needs institutions to run it. And this is especially true of an empire, which the United States has been in functional terms since 1945. Americans may, like the elder Bush, be uncomfortable with the word empire, but our successes, challenges and even disasters have been akin to those of all the great empires of history. The Trump administration’s war on its own imagined “deep state” is essentially a war against the very institutions needed to organize society at home and especially, defend it from its enemies abroad.
American power abroad is expressed not only through presidential decisions, but through the power of institutions, notably the State Department and the Defense Department. American diplomats deal with crises in dozens upon dozens of countries in the world on a daily basis that you never read about: they include small countries and large, troubled, and complex states like Pakistan, Nigeria and Colombia. The finest linguists and political secretaries are needed in overseas embassies to manage such challenges. Weaken the bureaucracy at this crucial level — at the same time you are discouraging new generations of young people from going into public service — and you weaken American power itself. This might take time to be noticed, but its effect will be real and insidious.”
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“Trump wants to exert control worldwide, but his actions against the bureaucracy undermine that goal.”
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“The Arabists and the China experts of the late 20th and early 21st centuries have been some of the finest bureaucrats I have encountered. They are the ultimate early warning system: the Arabists warned against the 2003 Iraq War and the China experts about the political and economic dangers of a conflict over Taiwan. You want the very best people in these jobs. Empires at their best encourage cosmopolitanism, that is, a knowledge of other languages and cultures required for the maintenance of good diplomatic and security relations. Yet the Trump administration is essentially telling brilliant, linguistically adroit young people not to want a career in government. It is fine to trim bloated bureaucracies in order to save money and to improve efficiency. But it is another thing entirely to make life miserable for those who remain by requiring them to fill out weekly forms about their activities and so forth. In such a circumstance, the very people you need to be motivated won’t be, and will look elsewhere for careers.”
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“USAID, through its projects often run by non-governmental organizations, has been for decades doing much more than running humanitarian programs throughout the developing world. In fact, these programs don’t operate in the abstract: Because they are on-the-ground operations often in far-flung areas of a given country, they build vital human connections that are money in the bank for diplomats and military people to utilize, especially during crisis situations where local contacts are essential. An empire is about more than guns and money, it is also about the maintenance of relationships built up on official and non-official levels throughout the world by way of, among other things, humanitarian projects. Trump has been rightly concerned about the rise of Chinese power around the world, but has seemingly not realized that China is itself spreading its influence in large part through development projects. Dismantling our humanitarian projects in places like Africa and South America leaves a vast opening for the Chinese to fill with projects of their own. It will also hurt our intelligence gathering, as USAID staffers have had their own networks in the hinterlands of difficult countries.
The postwar American-led order has been administered through three non-economic pillars: NATO, USAID, and various treaty alliances in the Pacific. The Trump administration disdains the first, is trying to gut the second, and is making the third very nervous.”
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“The British Empire lasted as long as it did through the brilliance of its diplomats and intelligence agents. As I can attest through reporting in Africa and elsewhere in the 1980s and 1990s, British influence continued for decades afterwards, partly because the British embassy or high commission in each country was manned by equally brilliant people who could always be counted on to deliver a great briefing to a reporter. Nothing projects power like the quality of people in your vital institutions at home and at your embassies and other missions around the world.
The most long-lasting world powers and empires succeeded not by raw power but by various methods of persuasion: the more subtle the approach, the more longevity for the great power involved. And such persuasion involves a talented and well-functioning bureaucracy, exactly what Trump is seeking to destroy. Our bureaucratic elite is not like others around the world: its sense of seeing little differentiation between American self-interest and promoting human rights and democracy might be somewhat naïve and self-serving, but it is real and deeply felt. These bureaucrats know that without that sense of idealism, America’s foreign policy descends into a sterile, ruthless realpolitik: like China’s. And no empire or great power has lasted very long without a sense of mission. That’s why Trump’s policies toward the bureaucracy are in direct conflict with his goals abroad, even if he doesn’t know it.”
“During what was probably the low point of the 2024 presidential campaign, Vice President J.D. Vance falsely accused Haitian immigrants living in his home state of Ohio of kidnapping, killing, and eating pets. He then doubled down by challenging the legal status of those same immigrants.
“I’m still going to call them an illegal alien,” Vance said defiantly in late September, despite the fact that many Haitian immigrants in the U.S. have legal status under a federal policy called Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which is granted to migrants who cannot return safely to their home countries due to natural disasters or conflicts. At the time, Vance argued that TPS for Haitians was illegitimate because “Kamala Harris waves the wand illegally and says these people are now here legally.”
In reality, the TPS program for Haitians had been in place since the Obama administration, when it was implemented in response to a devastating earthquake. President Joe Biden extended TPS status for Haitians—legally, despite what Vance claimed—last year.
The Trump administration is now partially reversing that extension and retconning reality to match Vance’s politically motivated delusions.”
The fall of the U.S. dollar relative to other currencies will make imports more expensive. This increases the costs of imports on top of the more direct effect of tariffs.
The dollar’s decrease will make U.S. exports cheaper overseas, however, this may be counteracted by foreign countries retaliating against U.S. exports in response to Trump tariffs, and by foreign customers boycotting U.S. companies.
“as of May 2024, there were around 600,000 open positions in manufacturing (there’s almost 500,000 open today, according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve), so there isn’t exactly a shortage of roles out there. Instead, there is a disconnect between how Americans in general think of manufacturing and how they view it for themselves. This is one reason why the National Association of Manufacturers and the former Secretary of the Navy under President Joe Biden both called for increased immigration, Grabow notes.
“Such jobs can’t find enough interested Americans to fill them,” he wrote.
Manufacturing workers themselves report “markedly” lower personal satisfaction with their jobs than other workers, according to the Pew Research Center. They also report less satisfaction with their pay, health insurance, and other benefits, and flexibility of their work hours.”
China is the only main supplier of rare earths. Rare earths are key to military and industrial technologies. The Trump administration seems unprepared for China’s predictable move to ban rare earth minerals.
“Authorities have detained a co-founder of Columbia University’s Palestinian Student Union as he was completing the final steps toward gaining U.S. citizenship in what appears to be part of a widening crackdown on college activists by the Trump administration.
Mohsen Mahdawi, who had permanent U.S. residency, was taken into custody Monday in Vermont when he went to a federal office building for a naturalization appointment, according to a legal filing his attorney submitted to block his transfer to a detention facility out of state.”
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““As a result of his speech he’s being detained, I mean it’s outrageous,” said Luna Droubi, an attorney for Mahdawi, who was raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank but has lived in the U.S. for a decade.”
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“Mahdawi appeared on “60 Minutes” in 2023 and was active in the Palestinian student protest movement at Columbia but says he had no role in organizing the largest and most raucous of the demonstrations in the following spring, according to his lawyer’s court filing.
He had finished his studies at Columbia and was planning to graduate in May and then return to the campus in the fall for a master’s degree. Mahdawi is a Buddhist and “believes in non-violence and empathy as a central tenet of his religion,” the court filing said.”
“The White House says it has the upper hand in its trade war with China. Its actions suggest otherwise.
Top administration officials spent the weekend trying to defend a carve-out of consumer electronics from the astronomical 145 percent tariffs it levied on China last week. The carve-out was neither an exemption nor a policy rollback, the White House argued, because those electronics are still subject to a separate 20 percent tariff on China and some electronic components could face sector-specific tariffs in the future.
But to some White House allies, the exceptions are indicative of the relatively weak position the administration is in as it wages a trade war with China, which has spent years making preparations for an escalation with the U.S. on trade. The carve-outs also reveal the conundrum facing the administration: The U.S. is imposing new tariffs on Chinese goods in an attempt to move manufacturing back to the U.S., but those tariffs are particularly painful for U.S. manufacturers because they are currently so dependent on Chinese parts.
So far, the U.S. has demonstrated that it is more willing to bend than China is in this burgeoning fight.
“Xi Jinping will not back down,” said one former Trump administration official, who like others in this story was granted anonymity to share their candid assessment of the U.S.-China relationship, adding that “the CCP will lose confidence in him” if he does, using the acronym for the ruling Chinese Communist Party.”
“A long sliver of federal land along the U.S.-Mexico border that President Donald Trump is turning over to the Department of Defense would be controlled by the Army as part of a base, which could allow troops to detain any trespassers, including migrants, U.S. officials told The Associated Press.
The transfer of that border zone to military control — and making it part of an Army installation — is an attempt by the Trump administration to get around a federal law that prohibits U.S. troops from being used in domestic law enforcement on American soil.
But if the troops are providing security for land that is part of an Army base, they can perform that function. However, at least one presidential powers expert said the move is likely to be challenged in the courts.”
The military should be focused on fighting and winning wars, not enforcing immigration policy.