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      Negotiators Close In on Hostage Deal That Would Halt Fighting in Gaza for Weeks

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      A written draft agreement calls for the phased release of captives held by Hamas in exchange for a cessation in Israel’s military offensive for about two months.American-led negotiators are edging closer to an agreement in which Israel would suspend its war in Gaza for about two months in exchange for the release of more than 100 hostages still held by Hamas, a deal that could be sealed in the next two weeks and would transform the conflict consuming the region.Negotiators have developed a written draft agreement merging proposals offered by Israel and Hamas in the last 10 days into a basic framework that will be the subject of talks in Paris on Sunday. While there are still important disagreements to be worked out, negotiators are cautiously optimistic that a final accord is within reach, according to U.S. officials who insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive talks.President Biden spoke by phone separately Friday with the leaders of Egypt and Qatar, who have served as intermediaries with Hamas, to narrow the remaining differences. He is also sending his C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, to Paris for Sunday’s talks with Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari officials. If Mr. Burns makes enough progress, Mr. Biden may then send his Middle East coordinator, Brett McGurk, who just returned to Washington, back to the region to help finalize the agreement.“Both leaders affirmed that a hostage deal is central to establishing a prolonged humanitarian pause in the fighting and ensure additional lifesaving humanitarian assistance reaches civilians in need throughout Gaza,” the White House said in a statement Friday night summarizing the president’s conversation with Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, Qatar’s prime minister. “They underscored the urgency of the situation and welcomed the close cooperation among their teams to advance recent discussions.”In a statement in Israel on Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reaffirmed his commitment to securing the release of those hostages who were not freed as part of a more limited agreement in November. “As of today, we have returned 110 of our hostages and we are committed to returning all of them home,” he said. “We are dealing with this and we are doing so around the clock, including now.”The hostages have been in captivity since Oct. 7, when Hamas gunmen stormed into Israel and killed an estimated 1,200 people and seized about 240 more in the worst terrorist attack in the country’s history. Israel’s military retaliation since then has killed more than 25,000 people, most of them women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry. It is not clear how many of those killed in Gaza were Hamas combatants.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      State Dept. Tells Congress It Has Approved Sale of F-16 Jets to Turkey

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      The department received documents on Friday signed by Turkey’s leader approving Sweden’s long-delayed entry into NATO. The alliance now awaits word from the lone holdout, Hungary.The State Department notified Congress on Friday that it had approved a $23 billion sale of F-16 fighter jets and related equipment to Turkey after the country’s leader signed documents to allow Sweden’s long-delayed entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, department officials and the Pentagon said.Although Congress could move to formally block the sale, four senior lawmakers told the State Department on Friday evening that they would not object, after their aides reviewed the documents signed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, U.S. officials said.Congressional officials had demanded to see the documents before signaling their approval of the sale, so the State Department asked Turkey to fly the documents to New York on Friday. The department had someone pick up the documents in New York and bring them to Washington by Friday evening to show the lawmakers.The department’s subsequent formal notification to Congress means the sale will almost certainly occur, satisfying Mr. Erdogan’s main condition for supporting Sweden’s accession to NATO and potentially helping bring to a close an episode that has strained relations between the United States and Turkey.Turkey was, along with Hungary, one of two NATO members withholding approval of Sweden’s entry into the alliance. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken had undertaken intense diplomacy since last year, including meeting with Mr. Erdogan in Istanbul this month, to try to change the Turkish leader’s mind.Mr. Blinken discussed the issue with Mr. Erdogan in a visit to Turkey in February 2023, and said three times that Turkey would not get the F-16s if it refused to approve Sweden’s accession, a U.S. official said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Is North Korea Planning a War?

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      An intensification of nuclear threats from North Korea while the world is preoccupied with other wars has ignited an urgent debate over Mr. Kim’s motives.North Korea fired hundreds of artillery shells in waters near South Korean border islands on Jan. 5. Last week, it said it no longer regarded the South as inhabited by “fellow countrymen” but as a “hostile state” it would subjugate through a nuclear war. On Friday, it said it had tested an underwater nuclear drone to help repel U.S. Navy fleets.That new drumbeat of threats, while the United States and its allies have been preoccupied with the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, has set foreign officials and analysts wondering whether the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has moved beyond posturing and is planning to assert more military force.For decades, a central part of the North Korean playbook has been to stage carefully measured and timed military provocations — some aimed at tightening internal discipline, others at demanding attention from its neighbors and the United States, or all of that at once.But to several close watchers of North Korea, the latest round of signals from Mr. Kim feels different. Some are taking it as a clue that the North has become disillusioned with seeking diplomatic engagement with the West, and a few are raising the possibility that the country could be planning a sudden assault on South Korea.A New Year’s celebration in Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, on Dec. 31, 2023.Kim Won Jin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTwo veteran analysts of North Korea — the former State Department official Robert L. Carlin and the nuclear scientist Siegfried S. Hecker — sounded an alarm this past week in an article for the U.S.-based website 38 North, asserting that Mr. Kim was done with mere threats. “Kim Jong-un has made a strategic decision to go to war,” they wrote.Analysts broadly agree that North Korea has been shifting its posture in recent years, compelled by an accumulation of both internal problems, including a moribund economy and food and oil shortages, and frustrations in its external diplomacy, like Mr. Kim’s failure to win an end to international sanctions through direct diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump. And most agree that the North’s recent closeness with Russia, including supplying artillery shells and missiles for use in Russia’s war in Ukraine, will be a game-changer in some way.But there is still stark disagreement over where Mr. Kim’s new tack might be leading.Many say that Mr. Kim’s ultimate goal remains not a war with South Korea, a treaty ally of the United States, but Washington’s acceptance of his country as a nuclear power by prompting arms-reduction talks.“The North Koreans won’t start a war unless they decide to become suicidal; they know too well that they cannot win the war,” said Park Won-gon, a North Korea expert at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. “But they would love their enemies to believe that they could, because that could lead to engagement and possible concessions, like the easing of sanctions.”Posters in Pyongyang remind citizens of North Korea’s need to remain on a war footing.Cha Song Ho/Associated PressAnalysts in China, North Korea’s most vital ally, were also deeply skeptical that Mr. Kim would go to war unless the North were attacked. Prof. Shi Yinhong, at Renmin University in Beijing, asserted that the North’s leadership, not being irrational, ultimately acted out of self-preservation — and that starting a war would work against that goal.Others noted that the North could assert itself militarily, including through smaller conventional strikes and bolder weapons testing, without necessarily triggering a deadly response.“There are many rungs of the escalation ladder that North Korea can climb short of all-out war,” said Victor Cha, a Korea expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Kim is not that confident in his capabilities to deter U.S. reaction if he were to do something rash.”If Mr. Kim wants to climb that ladder, recent history suggests that this might be the time.North Korea has liked to unsettle its enemies at their most sensitive political moments, and both the United States and South Korea are holding elections this year. The North launched a long-range rocket in late 2012, between the United States and South Korean presidential elections. It conducted a nuclear test shortly before the inauguration of a South Korean leader in 2013. In 2016, it conducted another nuclear test two months before the American presidential election.North Korea could also attempt provocations in the coming weeks to try to help liberals who favor inter-Korean negotiations win parliamentary elections in South Korea in April, said the analyst Ko Jae-hong at the Seoul-based Institute for National Security Strategy. Through provocations, North Korea hopes to spread fears among South Korean voters that increasing pressure on the North, as the current administration of President Yoon Suk Yeol has tried to do, might “lead to a nuclear war,” he said.South Korean military exercises this month near the border with North Korea.Ahn Young-Joon/Associated PressNorth Korea “will continue to increase tensions until after the U.S. elections,” said Thomas Schäfer, a former German diplomat who served twice as ambassador to North Korea. But “at the height of tensions, it will finally be willing to re-engage with a Republican administration in the hope to get sanctions relief, some sort of acceptance of their nuclear program, and — as main objective — a reduction or even complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula,” Mr. Schäfer said in a rebuttal to Mr. Carlin’s and Mr. Hecker’s analysis.Since Mr. Kim came to power in 2011, he has committed to building North Korea’s nuclear capability, using it both as a deterrent and as a negotiating tool to try to win concessions from Washington, like the removal of U.N. sanctions, to achieve economic growth.He tried it when he met Mr. Trump in 2018 and again in 2019. It failed spectacularly, and Mr. Kim returned home empty-handed and in humiliation.President Donald J. Trump and Kim Jung-un in 2019 in the Demilitarized Zone. In talks that year, the two failed to reach a deal on North Korea abandoning its nuclear ambitions in return for concessionsErin Schaff/The New York TimesHe then vowed to find a “new way” for his country.Since then, the North has rejected repeated calls from Washington for talks. It has also rejected South Korea as a dialogue partner, indicating from 2022 that it would use nuclear weapons against South Korea in a war and abandoning its long-held insistence that the weapons would keep the Korean Peninsula peaceful as a deterrent. It has tested more diverse, and harder-to-intercept, means of delivering its nuclear warheads.There is doubt that the North has yet built a reliable intercontinental ballistic missile that could target the United States. But two of the North’s main enemies, South Korea and Japan, are much closer.On the diplomatic front, Mr. Kim has taken pains to signal that he no longer views the United States as a critical negotiating partner, instead envisioning a “neo-Cold War” in which the United States is in retreat globally. He has aggressively improved military ties with Russia, and in return has most likely secured Russian promises of food aid and technological help for his weapons programs, officials say.South Korean troops patrol the entrance to a beach on an island near the sea boundary with North Korea.Jung Yeon-Je/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“I worry that his confidence might lead him to misjudge with a small act, regardless of his intention, escalating to war amid a tense ‘power-for-power’ confrontation with the United States and its allies,” said Koh Yu-hwan, a former head of the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.Despite its own increasingly aggressive military posture in recent years, China may prove to be a damper on any North Korean military adventurism.China and North Korea are bound by a treaty signed in 1961 that requires each country to provide military assistance if the other is attacked. But China has little incentive to be drawn into a war in Korea right now.“A war on the Korean Peninsula would be disastrous for Beijing. An entire half-century of peace in East Asia, a period of unprecedented growth for the P.R.C., would come to a crashing halt,” said John Delury, a professor of Chinese studies at Yonsei University in Seoul, referring to the People’s Republic of China.The United States has long leaned on Beijing to rein in North Korea. By drawing close to Moscow, Mr. Kim has been putting his own pressure on China’s leader, Xi Jinping.“It is notable that Kim made his first post-pandemic trip to the Russian Far East, skipping China, and he just sent his foreign minister to Moscow, not Beijing,” Mr. Delury said. By raising tensions, Mr. Kim “can see what Xi is willing to do to placate him,” he added.David Pierson More

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      China Failed to Sway Taiwan’s Election. What Happens Now?

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      Beijing loathes the new president, Lai Ching-te. He aims to protect the status quo with caution and American help, but tensions are likely to rise.China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has tied his country’s great power status to a singular promise: unifying the motherland with Taiwan, which the Chinese Communist Party sees as sacred, lost territory. A few weeks ago, Mr. Xi called this a “historical inevitability.”But Taiwan’s election on Saturday, handing the presidency to a party that promotes the island’s separate identity for the third time in a row, confirmed that this boisterous democracy has moved even further away from China and its dream of unification.After a campaign of festival-like rallies, where huge crowds shouted, danced and waved matching flags, Taiwan’s voters ignored China’s warnings that a vote for the Democratic Progressive Party was a vote for war. They made that choice anyway.Lai Ching-te, a former doctor and the current vice president, who Beijing sees as a staunch separatist, will be Taiwan’s next leader. It’s an act of self-governed defiance that proved what many already knew: Beijing’s arm-twisting of Taiwan — economically and with military harassment at sea and in the air — has only strengthened the island’s desire to protect its de facto independence and move beyond China’s giant shadow.“The more hard-line, tougher approach hasn’t worked,” said Susan Shirk, a research professor at the University of California, San Diego, and the author of “Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise.” “That’s the reality of Taiwanese politics.”That evolution, cultural and political, comes with risks. Mr. Lai’s victory forces Mr. Xi to face a lack of progress. And while China’s full response will play out over months or years, China’s Taiwan affairs office said Saturday night that the election cannot change the direction of cross-strait relations, effectively ensuring that the dynamic of brinkmanship and stress will continue and most likely intensify.After his win, Mr. Lai promised to seek a balanced approach to relations with Beijing.Lam Yik Fei for The New York TimesChina and the United States have made Taiwan a test of competing sensitivities and visions. To Beijing, the island is a remnant of its civil war that the United States has no business meddling with. To Washington, it is the first line of defense for global stability, a democracy of 23 million people and the microprocessor factory for the world.The gargantuan stakes add gravity to every word or policy that Mr. Lai or his party might deliver now and after his inauguration in May. With Taiwan’s sense of self and China’s expectations in conflict, Mr. Xi is not expected to sit idly by.Before the election, in editorials and official comments, Chinese officials painted Mr. Lai as a villain, calling him a stubborn “Taiwan independence worker,” a “destroyer of cross-strait peace” and potentially the “creator of a dangerous war.”During the campaign, Mr. Lai, 64, a veteran politician respected by supporters for his quiet determination, said that Taiwan did not need formal independence. In a news conference after his victory, he said he would seek a balanced approach to cross-strait relations including “cooperation with China,” following the path of his predecessor, Tsai Ing-wen.But there is little chance of China changing its opinion.“Lai Ching-te is an impulsive and politically biased figure, so we cannot rule out the possibility that unpredictable and unknown developments may occur during his tenure,” said Zhu Songling, a professor of Taiwan studies at Beijing Union University.“I’m afraid it’s very dangerous,” he added, noting that Mr. Xi’s views on Taiwan were clear. That includes his insistence that force can be used if necessary.China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, and President Biden in California in November. Warnings about Taiwan have become a staple of U.S.-China diplomacy.Doug Mills/The New York TimesWestern scholars of Chinese politics are not much more optimistic.“The next four years will be anything but stable in U.S.-China and cross-strait relations,” said Evan S. Medeiros, a professor of Asian studies at Georgetown University.Like other analysts, he said to expect a familiar suite of pressure tactics.At the very least, China will keep trying to manipulate Taiwan’s politics with disinformation, threats and economic incentives. Chinese officials have also hinted they could target trade, eliminating more tariff concessions.Expanded military drills are another possibility. Chinese fighter jets, drones and ships already encroach on Taiwan almost daily.Beijing has also shown that it will keep prodding Washington to pressure Taiwan and to cut military support. Messages of alarm are becoming a common feature of U.S.-China diplomacy.In Washington, on the eve of Taiwan’s election, Liu Jianchao, the head of the Chinese Communist Party’s international department, met with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken. The United States said Mr. Blinken “reiterated the importance of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”Mr. Liu, based on other official statements, most likely warned the United States not to intervene “in the Taiwan region” — a complaint sparked by an announcement that a delegation of former officials would head to Taipei after the election. Such visits have followed past elections. China’s Foreign Ministry condemned “the American side’s brazen chattering.”There are no plans in Washington to go silent, however, or constrain cooperation. Quite the opposite. Last year, the Biden administration announced $345 million in military aid for Taiwan, with weapons drawn from American stockpiles. Bills in Congress would also tighten economic ties to Taiwan, easing tax policy and laying a foundation for economic sanctions against China if it attacks.Taiwanese forces during an anti-landing drill last summer. The U.S. has pledged $345 million in military aid to the island.Lam Yik Fei for The New York TimesHaving worked with the Americans as vice president, Mr. Lai can move faster, analysts said, possibly into more sensitive areas.The United States could increase collaboration on cybersecurity, strengthening communication networks to a point that blurs the line with (or prepares for) intelligence sharing. It could seek to place military logistics equipment on the island — a strategy the Pentagon is introducing throughout the region.It is also an open secret that American military advisers, mostly retired officers, have a growing presence in Taiwan. Some Taiwanese officials call them “English teachers.” Under Mr. Lai, many more could be on the way.“Beijing has been turning a blind eye, so the question is: What size of that presence will cross the Rubicon?” said Wen-ti Sung, a political scientist at the Australian National University’s Taiwan Studies Program. He added: “Hopefully each additional step will not be seen as overtly provocative to elicit or justify a massive Chinese reaction.”War, of course, is not inevitable. It may be less likely right now, when China is busy with a dismal economy and the United States with wars in Europe and the Middle East.Some analysts also hope that Mr. Xi will find a way to claim victory in the election and step back from antagonism. With a third-party candidate, Ko Wen-je, winning 26 percent of the vote with a vague focus on a middle path in China relations, Mr. Lai won with just 40 percent.“It’s in China’s national interest to expand the path of peaceful integration so they won’t have to fight,” Professor Shirk said. “There are a lot of people watching this interaction and Beijing’s reaction — all the investors are watching it too.”In Taiwan, however, there may be little Mr. Xi can do to polish China’s image. In recent surveys, less than 10 percent of Taiwanese respondents considered China trustworthy.“We have seen too many examples of what Xi did to Hong Kong and how he treated his people,” said Cheng Ting-bin, 56, a teacher in Taipei who voted for Mr. Lai.Most Taiwanese see their future elsewhere. On Saturday, many said they hoped the government could leverage the powerful semiconductor industry to build connections to Southeast Asia and Europe.A crowd celebrating Mr. Lai’s win on Saturday. Relations with China were less dominant than usual as an election issue.Lam Yik Fei for The New York TimesDuring the campaign, any identification with China seemed to have been erased. Though Taiwan’s official name is the Republic of China, a holdover from when Chinese nationalists fled there, R.O.C. references were hard to find. At Mr. Lai’s rallies, supporters wore shimmering green jackets with “Team Taiwan” written in English across the back.Even the Nationalist Party, known for favoring closer ties with Beijing, emphasized deterrence, the status quo and Taiwanese identity. Its candidate, Hou Yu-ih, spoke with such a strong Taiwanese accent that Mandarin speakers unfamiliar with local inflections had a hard time understanding him.In many ways, the election was less of a referendum on China policy than usual. Cost-of-living issues became more dominant in part because the candidates’ platforms on foreign affairs all aligned with what most people said they wanted: a stronger military, closer ties with the democratic world, and a commitment to the status quo that avoids provoking Beijing but also seeks to tiptoe out of its orbit.“What we want is just to preserve our way of life,” said Alen Hsu, 65, a retiree who said his father had come from China and his son serves in the Taiwanese Air Force.“China,” he added, “simply cannot be trusted.”John Liu More

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      How Russian and Chinese Interference Could Affect the 2024 Election

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      The stakes for Russia in the presidential vote are large. Other adversaries also might try to deepen divisions among American voters.The U.S. government is preparing for its adversaries to intensify efforts to influence American voters next year. Russia has huge stakes in the presidential election. China seems poised to back a more aggressive campaign. Other countries, like Iran, might again try to sow division in the United States.As Washington looks ahead to the 2024 vote, U.S. intelligence agencies last week released a report on the 2022 midterm elections — a document that gives us some hints about what might be to come.Spy agencies concluded Russia favored Trump in 2016. What about in 2024?Russia appears to be paying close attention to the election, as its war in Ukraine is soon to enter a third year.Former President Donald J. Trump, the leading Republican candidate, has expressed skepticism about Ukraine funding. President Biden has argued that assisting Ukraine is in America’s interest.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      ‘Donald Trump Is No Moderate’

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      More from our inbox:Poll on Biden’s Handling of the War in GazaWealthy Donors Seeking InfluenceHelping Lower-Income People Pay BillsMatt ChaseTo the Editor:Re “The Secret of Trump’s Appeal Isn’t Authoritarianism,” by Matthew Schmitz (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, Dec. 18):According to Mr. Schmitz, the key to understanding Donald Trump’s electoral appeal is not his authoritarianism but his moderation. There may have been some truth to this eight years ago, when Mr. Trump’s policy views were often poorly defined. However, it is clearly no longer true in 2023.On a wide range of issues, including immigration, climate change, health care and gun control, Mr. Trump has endorsed policies supported by the right wing of the Republican Party. And when it comes to abortion, whatever his recent public statements, while he was in office, he consistently appointed anti-abortion judges committed to overturning Roe v. Wade.As a result, Mr. Trump now appeals most strongly to the far right wing of the Republican Party. Donald Trump is no moderate.Alan AbramowitzAtlantaThe writer is professor emeritus of political science at Emory University.To the Editor:Matthew Schmitz’s longwinded guest essay still misses the point: The bottom line of Donald Trump’s appeal to his supporters is the permission to indulge their darkest impulses and harshest judgments of “the other” — everyone in the world outside of MAGA Nation.Rich LaytonPortland, Ore.To the Editor:Matthew Schmitz could not be more wrong. There is no universe in which Donald Trump is a moderate. Moderates do not gut the system that they have sworn to uphold. Moderates do not consider calling in the military against American citizens, as Mr. Trump did during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations. Moderates do not start riots when they lose elections.Trump voters are either fellow grifters or people who do not understand how government works and are taken in by his shtick: the incurious and the easily fooled. It’s as simple — and as dangerous — as that. We have work to do to make sure he will not regain office.Christine PotterValley Cottage, N.Y.To the Editor:I was shocked to read a piece that wasn’t the usual drone of let’s count all the ways that Donald Trump is a disaster for the country. I’m so grateful that you are actually inviting a broader variety of opinions. It is just as valuable to understand why Mr. Trump is loved as why he is hated.I read the article twice, and it was compelling at times. I’m still not a fan of Mr. Trump, but am grateful that finally your paper is respecting its readership to handle different perspectives.T. PalserCalgary, AlbertaTo the Editor:Matthew Schmitz seems to think that he needs to explain to us that people are willing to overlook the clearly authoritarian tendencies of a candidate if they like some of his policies. Thanks, Mr. Schmitz, but we’re already well aware of this. Italians liked Mussolini because he “made the trains run on time.”This is exactly our point. This is how dictatorships happen.Robert Stillman CohenNew YorkTo the Editor:When you have to argue that the secret to someone’s appeal isn’t authoritarianism, the secret to their appeal is authoritarianism.David D. TurnerClifton, N.J.Poll on Biden’s Handling of the War in GazaPresident Biden addressing the nation from the Oval Office after visiting Israel in October, following the breakout of its war against Hamas.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Most Disapprove of Biden on Gaza, Survey Indicates” (front page, Dec. 19):You report that the people surveyed trusted Donald Trump to manage the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over President Biden by a margin of 46 percent to 38 percent. This is puzzling, since during his tenure as president, Mr. Trump was an extreme Israeli partisan. Indeed, everything he did with reference to the Middle East heavily favored Israel to the detriment of the Palestinians.Some of the actions that he undertook that were adverse to the Palestinians included: the appointment of an extreme Orthodox Jewish bankruptcy lawyer, who was an Israeli partisan, as ambassador to Israel; moving the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, contrary to both decades of American policy and Palestinian opposition; terminating American contributions to the U.N. fund for Palestinians; supporting the Israeli settler movement; and negotiating the Abraham Accords without any consideration of Palestinian interests.Mr. Trump is one of the people least likely to fairly manage the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Richard J. WeisbergNorwalk, Conn.To the Editor:The Biden administration is beginning to understand that while most Jewish Americans believe in Israel’s right to exist, this does not mean that American Jews overwhelmingly support the Israeli government’s relentless killing of innocent Palestinian civilians — at this point, more than 10,000 of them children.Increasingly, as the traumatized Israeli pursuit of Hamas costs more death and destruction, cracks are appearing in Jewish community support for the Biden administration’s military and political backing of the current Israeli government. President Biden is well advised to pay close attention to these cracks.As the article points out, nearly three-quarters of Jews historically vote Democratic. Unless Mr. Biden takes a harder line against the continued killings and steps up more boldly for a cease-fire, Democrats could lose Jewish votes.John CregerBerkeley, Calif.Wealthy Donors Seeking InfluenceHarvard University in Cambridge, Mass., on Tuesday.Adam Glanzman for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “College Turmoil Reveals a New Politics of Power” (news article, Dec. 15):Having spent a lifetime working for and with nonprofits, I am disgusted by wealthy donors who expect money to buy a voice in university affairs. Donations are gifts, not transactions, and I have always objected to 1) listing names of donors, whether on buildings or in concert programs, and 2) tax deductions for charitable donations.Yes, we will lose some ego-driven donors along the way, but we will eventually prevail by keeping it clean.Michael Rooke-LeySan FranciscoThe writer is a former law professor.Helping Lower-Income People Pay BillsJessica Jones and her three daughters moved in with Ms. Jones’s mother two years ago after her landlord did not renew the lease on a subsidized apartment. She said the displacement has wreaked family havoc.Elizabeth Bick for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Soaring Rents Are Burdening Lower Incomes” (front page, Dec. 12):Congress should exempt the first $40,000 of income from the Social Security tax, which would immediately give lower-income families some relief.The lost income to the government should not be seen as lost but as support to allow people to stay in their existing apartments.This would also be the time to apply the Social Security tax to higher incomes that are currently exempt above $160,200. And to cap or reduce the excessive interest rate — which currently averages 24 percent — that many people pay on their credit card bills.Studies show that lower-income households use credit cards to buy necessities like food and to pay utility bills. Those interest rates often translate into money that ultimately ends up in the pockets of high-income people who are invested in the market.Let’s all give a little, so people can live with dignity.Ann L. SullivanPortsmouth, R.I. More

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      China Increased U.S. Election Influence in 2022, Intelligence Report Says

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      Chinese authorities tacitly approved operations in a handful of races, according to the report, which represents the intelligence agencies’ joint analytic assessment.The Chinese government stepped up its efforts to influence American politics in the 2022 election, a new report released on Monday said, and intelligence officials are trying to learn if Beijing is preparing to further intensify those activities in next year’s presidential election.American intelligence agencies did not observe a foreign leader directing an interference campaign against the United States in 2022 in the same way Russia did in 2016. But, the report said, the U.S. government found an array of countries engaged in some kind of influence operations.And Chinese authorities tacitly approved operations to influence a handful of political races in the United States in 2022, according to the report, which represents the intelligence agencies’ joint analytic assessment.The intelligence agencies have already begun gearing up for influence efforts in the 2024 presidential election, which officials predict will be far more intense than those in 2022, with both China and Russia potentially trying to carry out major operations.In an interview this month, Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, the head of U.S. Cyber Command and the director of the National Security Agency, said 50 people at the two organizations he leads were “working together to generate insights” on the next election. One major question, he said, is whether China will intensify its work or change tactics.“What’s the role of China in 2024?” General Nakasone said. “How do they come in? Is it a Russia model? Is it a model that they executed in 2022? Is it something we haven’t seen before?”The report found that China mostly focused on a few races. While it included few details, U.S. officials have repeatedly highlighted how China worked against a candidate for Congress in New York because of his support for the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.The Chinese officials trying to influence the vote were operating under longstanding guidance from leaders to work against officials who were perceived to oppose the Chinese government. But the report also said leaders in China had ordered officials to focus their influence operations on Congress, convinced that it “is a locus of anti-China activity.”The Chinese campaigns were designed to portray the United States as chaotic, ineffective and unrepresentative, the report said. But Chinese leaders did not authorize a “comprehensive” effort, wary of the consequences if they were exposed.Nevertheless, the report said, Chinese interference in 2022 was more significant than during the presidential race two years earlier because “they did not expect the current administration to retaliate as severely as they feared in 2020.”The report’s explanation of that conclusion was not declassified and remains redacted in the version released to the public.Since the 2022 vote, China has been experimenting with artificial intelligence to spread disinformation, General Nakasone said.The report also found that Russia sought to denigrate Democrats during the 2022 elections largely because of their support for Ukraine, which Russian forces invaded in February of that year.“Moscow incorporated themes designed to weaken U.S. support for Ukraine into its propaganda,” the report said, “highlighting how election influence operations are a subset of broader influence activity.”Senior intelligence officials have said Russia was not as active in 2022 because senior officials there were distracted with the war in Ukraine. But many intelligence officials believe Russia will probably try to step up its operations in 2024, as aid for Ukraine has become a more divisive political issue.In addition, much of Russia’s ability to influence elections was orchestrated by companies controlled by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, including the Internet Research Agency. Mr. Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash in August after his failed rebellion and march on Moscow.U.S. officials said they were unsure about how easily Russian officials would be able to interfere in the election without Mr. Prigozhin and with the apparent demise of the Internet Research Agency.The intelligence agencies concluded that foreign governments have largely given up on trying to tamper directly with votes or hack into election infrastructure. Instead, they believe that influence campaigns are more effective. More

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      Trump ‘Could Tip an Already Fragile World Order Into Chaos’

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      Two weeks ago, The Washington Post published “A Trump Dictatorship Is Increasingly Inevitable. We Should Stop Pretending,” by Robert Kagan.Four days later, The Times published “Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First,” by Charlie Savage, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, one in an ongoing series of articles.On the same day, The Atlantic released the online version of its January/February 2024 issue; it included 24 essays under the headline “If Trump Wins.”While the domestic danger posed by a second Trump administration is immediate and pressing, Russia, China, North Korea and Iran — sometimes referred to as the “alliance of autocracies” — have an interest in weakening the global influence of the United States and in fracturing its ties to democracies around the globe.“Clearly, this coalition threatens global security and deterrence and requires policies suited to the assaults Russia and China regularly conduct,” Stephen Blank, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, wrote in a recent column published in The Hill, “The ‘No Limits’ Russo-Chinese Alliance Is Taking Flight.”In a 2020 essay, Michael O’Hanlon, the director of foreign policy research at Brookings, pointed out that “many Americans” question whethera global economy and alliances around the world are good for them. As the election of Donald Trump had proved in 2016, numerous voters are willing to rethink our place in the world. If we do not listen to that message, the entire domestic basis for a strong United States and an engaged foreign policy leadership role could evaporate.This conversation, “more than any other,” O’Hanlon wrote, “is the debate we need to have as a country.”If Donald Trump is re-elected, how will the former president — who has openly praised dictators like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, who has questioned the value of NATO and who has denigrated key allies — deal with the “the 4 plus 1 threat matrix — the five main threats of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and transnational violent extremism or terrorism”?To gauge the range of possible developments in a second Trump administration, I asked specialists in international affairs a series of questions. On the basic question — how damaging to American foreign policy interests would a second Trump administration be? — the responses ranged from very damaging to marginally so.Constanze Stelzenmüller, director of the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings, is quite worried.Asked if Trump would withdraw from NATO — a major blow to European allies and a huge boost for Vladimir Putin — Stelzenmüller replied by email:Very likely. We know that from [former ambassador to the United Nations, John] Bolton’s book and from recent reporting out of Trump’s inner circle. Sumantra Maitra’s dormant NATO article, much read at NATO, suggests a suspension or withdrawal-lite option — but even that would fatally undercut the credibility of Article V.(Article V of the NATO agreement asserts that “the parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them.”)Sumantra Maitra is a visiting senior fellow at Citizens for Renewing America, a pro-Trump think tank. His essay calls for retrenchment of America’s financial and logistical support of NATO, just short of withdrawal:A much more prudent strategy is to force a Europe defended by Europeans with only American naval presence and as a logistics provider of last resort with the U.S. reoriented toward Asia. West Europe will not be serious about the continent’s defense as long as Uncle Sam is there to break the glass during a fire.Stelzenmüller wrote that she sees little or no chance that a Trump administration would join an alliance of Russia, China, North Korea and other dictatorships, “but would Trump see himself as a friend of the authoritarians? Absolutely.” Under Trump, “the spectrum would clearly shift to a much more transactionalist, pro-authoritarian or even predatory mode. That alone could tip an already fragile world order into chaos.”Sarah Kreps, a political scientist at Cornell, suggested that “if past is prologue, we could expect Trump to harp on the issue of free riding but not actually do anything different. He’ll probably do a lot of heckling that’s unmatched by actual policy change.”In this context, Kreps continued, “it will be left to the career diplomats to do the heavy lifting behind the scenes to provide the alliance glue while Trump is hammering the capitals about burden sharing.”How about NATO?“The alliance has such deep roots now and has ebbed and flowed in terms of its strength, but the structural factors present right now will be more powerful than any individual president.”I asked Kreps whether it was conceivable that Trump could join a Russia-China-North Korea coalition.“Again, past being prologue here, we have good reason to think that he talks friendly to autocrats, but won’t act.”How would Trump change the role of the United States in foreign affairs?“I would expect to see more of what we saw in the last administration: a lot of bluster, a lot of braggadocious declarations about how countries are taking the United States seriously now, but not a lot of change.”Kreps was the least alarmed of those I contacted concerning a second Trump administration.Philipp Ivanov, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, staked out a middle — but hardly comforting — ground. In an email, he wrote that because of their conflicting interests, “it’s highly unlikely China, Russia, North Korea and Iran will ever form an alliance.”Instead, he described their ties as “a network of highly transactional bilateral relationships — a marriage of convenience — that lacks basic trust, let alone the kind of common strategic vision and military interconnectedness that characterize the U.S. alliances.”Their only commonality, Ivanov argued,is an autocratic or dictatorial governance and a shared objective to disrupt and undermine U.S. power. All four actors realize that individually or together they cannot seriously challenge American hegemony or compete with its alliance system, but they can wreak havoc, threaten and weaken resolve in their respective spheres of interest.The re-election of Trump would, in Ivanov’s view,undermine the significant efforts of the Biden administration to rebuild, strengthen and reimagine American alliance system in Europe and Asia — from rallying the Europeans to support Ukraine to a comprehensive strengthening of strategic and military relations with Korea, Australia, Japan and Philippines to balance Chinese power.Ivanov believes Trump would face insurmountable obstacles if he attempted to withdraw from NATO, but thatUnder Trump, America’s international image in a democratic world is likely to suffer. The biggest risks to U.S. foreign policy are Trump’s disdain for alliances, transactional approach to foreign and security policy, overly aggressive approach to China and Iran, and a more forgiving attitude to Putin and Kim.Pyongyang, Moscow, Beijing and Tehran will cheer his re-election, but its leaders will be quietly anxious about his next moves.Jonathan M. Winer, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement, who is now a scholar at the Middle East Institute, put it this way:Trump’s election would, of course, help Russia, threaten Ukraine and threaten western alliances, starting with NATO itself. Trump has it in for Ukraine, as reflected in the fraying of Ukrainian support within the elements of the Republican congressional caucus that is closest to Trump.Trump has repeatedly expressed his admiration for autocrats. He also already threatened to pull out of NATO during his first term, and attacked democratic European leaders almost as often as he praised the autocratic leadership of China, North Korea, and Russia.Trump is an authoritarian nationalist. He fits right into the mold of the “autocrats,” as his teasing statement to Sean Hannity — and in a very recent Iowa town hall — that he would only behave in a dictatorial fashion on ‘day one’ of his presidency.While it is inconceivable that Trump could realign the United States with China, Russia and North Korea, Winer wrote, “what he could do is make the U.S. ‘neutral,’ just as the American First movement professed ‘neutrality’ in relation to the fascist threat prior to Pearl Harbor.”Some experts pointed out that Trump could make specific policy decisions that might not appear significant to Americans, but that have great consequence for our allies — consequences that could lead in at least one case to further nuclear proliferation.Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation, wrote to me in an email that “many in the Republic of Korea national security community are concerned about the North Korean nuclear weapon threat and whether they can really trust the United States security commitment in the aftermath of the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan, which hit the ROK much harder than I think most Americans realize.”Bennett cited the “fear that if Trump is elected president in 2024, he will talk about removing some U.S. forces from Korea. Whether or not such action actually begins, there is a risk that the Republic of Korea would react to such talk by once again starting a covert nuclear weapon development effort.”James Lindsay, senior vice president at the Council on Foreign Relations, referring in an email to the perceived threat emanating from the “alliance of autocrats,” observed:If “alliance” is only intended to mean general cooperation among China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, then that is clearly happening. North Korea and Iran are supplying Russia with artillery shells and drones. Russia is supplying China with energy. China is supplying Russia with political cover at various international venues over the war in Ukraine.Lindsay argued:Trump could effectively gut NATO simply by saying he will not come to the aid of NATO allies in the event they are attacked. The power of Article V rests on the belief that alliance members, and specifically, the most powerful alliance member, will act when called upon. Destroy that belief and the organization withers. Walking away from Ukraine would damage the alliance as well even though Ukraine is not a member of NATO. Member countries would read it as a signal that Trump is abandoning Europe.One of the major risks posed by a second Trump administration, Lindsay wrote, is thatTrump’s hostility toward alliances, skepticism about the benefits of cooperation writ large, and his belief in the power of unilateral action will lead him to make foreign policy moves that will unintentionally provide strategic windfalls to China, Russia, Iran or North Korea. The scenario in which he withdraws the United States from NATO or says he will not abide by Article V is the most obvious example. His intent will be to save money and/or free the United States from foreign entanglements. But Vladimir Putin would love to see NATO on the ash heap of history.Lindsay described decisions and policies Trump may consider:It’s easy to imagine other steps Trump might take, given his past actions and current rhetoric, that would similarly give advantage to Beijing, Moscow, Tehran or Pyongyang: abandoning Ukraine; questioning the wisdom of defending Taiwan; terminating the alliance with South Korea; ignoring Iranian aggression in the Middle East; recognizing North Korea as a nuclear power; and imposing a 10 percent, across-the-board tariff on all goods.On a larger scale, it would be difficult to overestimate the degree to which a second Trump term would represent a major upheaval in the tenets underlying postwar American foreign policy.Mark Medish is a former senior director of the National Security Council for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian Affairs. He argued in an email that “Trump’s rise represented a repudiation of the so-called ‘bipartisan consensus.’ For decades during the Cold War, there was a broad agreement in the US elite and our political culture that we had a clear enemy, the U.S.S.R. and the rest of the Communist bloc.”While there was significant disagreement within this consensus, Medish wrote, “we always knew who the enemy was, whether the Soviet Union or the perpetrators of 9/11.”During the 2016 campaign and his term in office, according to Medish, Trumptook on the establishment and attacked this bipartisan consensus, pointing to failures from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. The outside world, particularly our rivals and enemies, perceived this shift as a turning point toward U.S. detachment and decline and made them eager to push the envelope — to test whether the U.S. had indeed lost its “strategic depth.”Trump’s re-election, according to Medish, “would provide further evidence — in the eyes of Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang and Tehran — of U.S. disarray and the decline of the West.”Medish made the claim that “the challenge for the U.S./West is less military/economic than political. If the political and institutional center does not hold, the rest does not matter so much.”Why?Because our unmatchable power and vitality has been civilizational — the West has thrived through organic growth and it has prevailed globally by attraction, not primarily by force or threats. We are not the Roman Empire, we are the Roman Republic. Trump is a Rubicon-crosser not only on foreign policy, but also domestically. This disruption is the biggest threat to our security.Paul Poast, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, forthrightly agreed that “there is absolutely a push against the U.S.-led ‘liberal international order’ and that this push is being led by China, Russia, along with ‘junior partners’ like North Korea and Iran.”Poast, however, disagreed with many of his colleagues on the prospects for NATO under a second Trump administration.Trump had actually become a “NATO fan” by the end of his term. The key is whether NATO allies, and specifically the next Secretary General, take measures that appease Trump’s demands. In many respects, Trump would just be taking to the extreme what the U.S. has long done with NATO: push and manipulate the allies to do what is in the U.S.’s interest.I asked Robert Kagan what foreign policy might look like in a second Trump administration.“What will Trump do? Who knows?,” Kagan replied. “Who knows whether Trump himself has a foreign policy.” Trump “will certainly not have pro-liberal prejudices as most previous U.S. presidents have, at least since World War II. He will make common cause with right-wing forces in Europe, as he did in his first term.”Kagan’s conclusion?“Trump’s foreign policy will be unpredictable because we haven’t had a dictator as commander in chief. It will be uncharted territory.”During Trump’s term in office, virtually everyone — his adversaries, his allies, the media — consistently underestimated his willingness to break rules. He is a man without borders, without conscience, without dignity, ethics or integrity, committed only to what he perceives to be in his own interest. He admires dictators who rule without constraint, and if he believes it would be to his advantage to join them, there is nothing — in his mind or his character — that would stop him.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More