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      Ukraine ceasefire plans moving to operational phase, Starmer says

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      Keir Starmer has called for the “guns to fall silent in Ukraine” and said military powers will meet next week as plans to secure a peace deal move to an “operational phase”.The UK prime minister said Vladimir Putin’s “yes, but” approach to a proposed ceasefire was not good enough, and the Russian president would have to negotiate “sooner or later”.He accused Putin of trying to delay peace, and said it must become a reality after more than three years of war.Starmer was speaking at a press conference in Downing Street after a virtual meeting of the “coalition of the willing”, including the European Commission, European nations, Nato, Canada, Ukraine, Australia and New Zealand on Saturday morning.The meeting was addressed by Starmer, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte.Starmer told journalists: “Sooner or later Putin will have to come to the table. So this is the moment. Let the guns fall silent, let the barbaric attacks on Ukraine once and for all stop, and agree to a ceasefire now.”He added: “Now is the time to engage in discussion on a mechanism to manage and monitor a full ceasefire, and agree to serious negotiations towards not just a pause, but a lasting peace, backed by strong security arrangements through our coalition of the willing.”He said the meeting had led to “new commitments”, including on the wider defence and security of Europe.“We won’t sit back and wait for Putin to act,” he said. “Instead we will keep pushing forward, so the group I convened today is more important than ever.”He added: “We agreed we will keep increasing the pressure on Russia, keep the military aid flowing to Ukraine, and keep tightening the restrictions on Russia’s economy to weaken Putin’s war machine and bring him to the table.“And we agreed to accelerate our practical work to support a potential deal. So we will now move into an operational phase.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOf the military meeting on Thursday, he said it would lead to “strong and robust plans … to swing in behind a peace deal and guarantee Ukraine’s future security”.Starmer had earlier called Ukraine and Zelenskyy the “party of peace”.He said Donald Trump was “absolutely committed to the lasting peace that is needed in Ukraine, and everything he’s doing is geared towards that end”.He told journalists Europe needed to improve its own defence and security, and said the UK was talking to the US on a daily basis about the war.Kyiv has already accepted plans for an immediate 30-day ceasefire but, on Thursday, Putin set out sweeping conditions that he wanted to be met before Russia would agree. They include a guarantee that Ukraine would not rearm or mobilise during the truce.Starmer said: “Volodymyr had committed to a 30-day unconditional ceasefire, but Putin is trying to delay, saying there must be a painstaking study before a ceasefire can take place. Well the world needs action, not a study, not empty words and conditions.”On Saturday, Zelenskyy posted on X that Russian forces were building up along the eastern border of Ukraine, which could signal an attack on the Sumy region.He said: “The buildup of Russian forces indicates that Moscow intends to keep ignoring diplomacy. It is clear that Russia is prolonging the war.”The Ukrainian president said his forces were still fighting in Russia’s Kursk region, and were not facing an encirclement, despite claims by his Russian and US counterparts.Starmer said: “President Trump has offered Putin the way forward to a lasting peace. Now we must make this a reality. So this is the moment to keep driving towards the outcome that we want to see, to end the killing, a just and lasting peace in Ukraine, and lasting security for all of us.” More

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      US official heading Ukraine peace plan has history of empathizing with Russia

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      A retired US general charged with helping sell the Trump administration’s Ukraine peace plan wrote a string of op-eds and reports for a rightwing thinktank in which he repeatedly questioned whether Ukraine had a legitimate part to play in peace negotiations.Keith Kellogg also blamed the war on the machinations of a US “military-industrial complex” and “[Joe] Biden’s national security incompetence” rather than Russia’s 2022 invasion, which has been condemned across the globe and resulted in a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives.Kellogg has been seen as a hawk on Russia, but he also wrote that “the US should consider leveraging its military aid to Ukraine to make it contingent on Ukrainian officials agreeing to join peace talks with Russia”. Earlier this month, after a disastrous Washington DC meeting with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on 28 February, US aid to Ukraine was paused, as was intelligence sharing.Kellogg is also surrounded by some key staff who share a rightwing nationalist world view or have links to far-right populist figures.After spending the Biden years at the rightwing and Trumpist America First Policy Institute (AFPI), Kellogg took at least two young AFPI staffers with him to assist him as Trump’s presidential special envoy to Russia and Ukraine.One, Gloria McDonald, is a senior policy adviser to Kellogg after co-authoring several of his AFPI publications, according to her LinkedIn profile. McDonald’s résumé contains no foreign policy experience besides her AFPI policy analyst work and two short Trump-era internships at the US embassy in Kyiv, with her second four-month stint coming after Donald Trump fired then ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.Another ex-AFPI staffer, Zach Bauder, is employed as a special assistant to Kellogg, according to a LinkedIn profile reviewed by the Guardian. He was also a field operative for the chaotic 2022 congressional campaign of the far-right Republican Joe Kent, now Trump’s pick for the National Counterterrorism Center chief.The Guardian sought to confirm their appointments with the state department. In response, a state department spokesperson wrote that they do not comment on personnel. Emails were also sent to Bauder and McDonald’s presumed state department email addresses requesting comment.Foreign Agents Registration Act (Fara) documents show that another Kent operative, Matt Braynard, approached Bauder while acting as a lobbyist for the Japanese rightwing populist party Sanseitō, whose leader’s “conspiracist, anti-globalist worldview” has included promoting antisemitic and pro-Russian positions.Braynard’s Fara declaration says that Bauder shared his “interest in meeting with organization leadership”.The revelations about the special envoy’s pro-Russia writings and the far-right connections of his staff come at a time when the Trump administration has been accused of seeking to hand Russia victory in its war at the expense of Ukraine and other European allies, and when the employment of young, ideological staffers across government agencies has drawn scrutiny.However, over the last week Russia has reportedly criticized Kellogg and he was recently excluded from high-level talks on ending the war after Moscow said it didn’t want him involved, NBC News reported. Kellogg was absent from two recent diplomatic summits about the war in Saudi Arabia even though the talks came under his remit.Kellogg’s op-edsKellogg retired from the US army in 2003 as a lieutenant general. He was a prominent figure in the national security hierarchy of the first Trump administration. In 2017 he was the acting national security adviser in the wake of the departure of Michael Flynn. He was chief of staff for the national security council from Trump’s inauguration until April 2018, and then replaced HR McMaster as the national security adviser, a position he held until the inauguration of Joe Biden.From 2021 until his recall into the second Trump administration, Kellogg became the chair of the Center for a New American Security at AFPI, a rightwing thinktank founded after Trump’s defeat by prominent figures in his first administration including the policy adviser Brooke Rollins and economic adviser Larry Kudlow.Described as a “White House in waiting” for Trump’s second term, AFPI has supplied at least 11 Trump cabinet secretaries and agency heads, reportedly more than any other organization.Senior Trump appointments with AFPI ties include the FBI director, Kash Patel, the education secretary, Linda McMahon, and the attorney general, Pam Bondi.At AFPI, Kellogg articulated what he called an “America first” foreign policy. Since 2022, that took the form of increasingly strident criticism of US efforts to assist in the defense of Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.Before the Russian invasion had even commenced, Kellogg wrote that “Ukraine is primarily a European issue to solve”, and empathized with Russia’s point of view: “To Russia, the issue of Ukraine is deeper and more personal. To Russia, it is about their security.”Before the invasion, he urged that Ukraine be “armed to the teeth” as a deterrent, but opposed “a no-fly zone and other ways to engage American military forces in the Ukraine conflict”.After the invasion, Kellogg increasingly reserved his criticisms for the Biden administration, Nato allies and Ukraine, with sympathy withheld from all except Putin and Russia.In June 2022, in a statement co-written with Fred Fleitz, Kellogg wrote of Biden’s announcement of $1.2bn in aid to Ukraine: “This newest call for additional aid is a nonstarter and is not in the best interest of the American people.”View image in fullscreenHis turn against the administration and US allies was most evident from late 2023, including in reports and opinion articles Kellogg wrote with McDonald, then a senior policy analyst at AFPI.McDonald was given the AFPI role with scant previous experience, according to her biography at AFPI’s website, her LinkedIn profile, and information from public records and data brokers.In 2018 and 2019, McDonald did summer internships at the US embassy in Kyiv, per her LinkedIn page. In 2017, she did another internship with a Republican congressman, Dave Brat. Her time at AFPI is the only full-time work experience she takes into her apparent appointment as Kellogg’s most senior adviser in his efforts to implement Trump’s mooted peace deal.In one co-written report, the pair argue that the best course of action for the US is to concede any possibility of Ukraine’s membership in Nato in advance of peace negotiations.“In the case of granting Ukraine NATO membership,” they write, “the US eliminates the very incentive that would bring Russia to the negotiating table. By taking this issue off the table in the near term, however, the US offers an incentive for Russia to join peace talks and agree to an end-state.”They also specifically criticize the Biden administration’s guarantee that Ukraine would be involved in any negotiations.“The Biden Administration’s policy of ‘nothing about Ukraine, without Ukraine’ and arming Ukraine ‘as long as it takes’ has, therefore, only served to remove the urgency of reaching a negotiated end-state to the war.”They further recommend withholding arms from Ukraine in order to force it to the negotiating table: “The US should consider leveraging its military aid to Ukraine to make it contingent on Ukrainian officials agreeing to join peace talks with Russia to negotiate an end state to this conflict.”In a co-written opinion article for the rightwing Washington Times website in December 2023, the pair focused on a recent Zelenskyy visit to the US that included meetings with defense contractors.The pair claimed that this was evidence “our national security policy is being unduly influenced by the interests of the military-industrial complex.”In the piece, they elaborate on this conspiracy narrative about Ukraine and the military-industrial complex: “The US withdrawal from Afghanistan significantly reduced defense contractors’ profits,” they write, adding that “the proxy war in Ukraine, however, not only reignited these defense contracting revenue but also spurred global military spending, which was raised to a historic $2.24 trillion after Russia invaded.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn an April 2024 AFPI report written with Fleitz, Kellogg placed the blame for the war largely on Biden, suggesting that his attitude towards Russia was provocative.“Biden’s hostile policy toward Russia not only needlessly made it an enemy of the United States,” they wrote, “but it also drove Russia into the arms of China and led to the development of a new Russia-China-Iran-North Korea axis.”They wrote: “It was in America’s best interests to maintain peace with Putin and not provoke and alienate him with aggressive globalist human rights and pro-democracy campaigns or an effort to promote Ukrainian membership in NATO.”They also wrote that Putin’s sabre-rattling at the beginning of 2022 should have induced the US to make a deal, writing: “It was in America’s interest to make a deal with Putin on Ukraine joining NATO, especially by January 2022 when there were signs that a Russian invasion was imminent.”They describe ongoing support of the Ukraine war effort as “expensive virtue signaling and not a constructive policy to promote peace and global stability”.Kellogg and Fleitz appear to recommend that Russia be allowed to keep any territorial gains, arguing that the US should “continue to arm Ukraine and strengthen its defenses to ensure Russia will make no further advances and will not attack again after a cease-fire or peace agreement”.Again, Kellogg signs off on excluding Ukraine from EU membership, writing: “President Biden and other NATO leaders should offer to put off NATO membership for Ukraine for an extended period in exchange for a comprehensive and verifiable peace deal”.Zach Bauder’s roleAlong with Kellogg and McDonald, the policy adviser, another staffer, Bauder, has come via the AFPI pipeline.And although Bauder has less apparent experience in foreign affairs than even McDonald, he does have international connections that appear related to his 2022 field work for a far-right candidate’s congressional campaign.Bauder – who only graduated from rightwing Hillsdale College last year – is employed as a special assistant to Kellogg, according to his LinkedIn page.Besides internships at AFPI and the Austrian Economics Center in Vienna, Bauder’s only work experience besides working as an operations coordinator at AFPI in 2023 was field organizing for the failed 2022 congressional campaign of Kent.The Guardian has previously reported on Kent’s far-right political positions and unanswered questions about his campaign finances and employment.Daily Beast reporting in January 2024 implicated Braynard, a “former top aide” of Kent’s who had “white nationalist ties” in campaign finance issues. A significant proportion of 2022 campaign disbursements went to a company belonging to Braynard’s wife.After being connected with Bauder on Kent’s campaign, Braynard apparently tapped the relationship in his lobbying work for Sanseitō, the far-right populist party in Japan.Fara rules require lobbyists for foreign entities to lodge declarations that specify not only who they are working for, and how much they are paying, but who they make contact with in the course of pursuing their client’s aims.A September 2024 Fara filing from Braynard indicates that he had worked as a paid lobbyist for Sanseitō.Rob Fahey is an assistant professor in the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study in Shinjuku, Japan, who has written some of the scarce English language research on the far-right party.In a telephone conversation, he said the party had grown out of “the anti-vaccine, anti-masking social movement” touched off in Japan by the Covid-19 pandemic. He said that party members were “terminally online, and they are very, very deeply involved in the conspiracy framework that is a core part of the Maga movement as well”.Fahey said Sanseitō was part of the “new conspiratorial hard right in Japan” whose “media diet comes from the American conspiratorial ecosystem”.Fahey added that Sanseitō largely “see the war in Ukraine as through the same lens as American conspiracy theorists: it’s Nato’s fault, and Nato is part of the new world order”.Braynard’s filing says that the aim of his lobbying for the group is for them to “win Japanese elections”.On Braynard’s account in the Fara declaration, “the principal, party leader Sohei Kamiya, had planned a trip to the US”.He continues: “The principal was interested in appearing on Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson’s podcast, so I texted the producers of those shows. I also contacted Americans for Tax Reform, Heritage Foundation, and America First Policy Center to ask if they would be interested in meeting with the principal to discuss common, populist conservative policies.”In his list of the people he contacted, along with producers for Carlson and Bannon and a Heritage Foundation staffer, Braynard lists Bauder.The filing said he texted Bauder, described as “formerly and then again more recently staff of America First Policy Institute, but not employed by them at the time I contacted him”.Following the Oval Office meltdown with Zelenskyy, it has seemed that Trump himself has been calling the shots on a cooling relationship with Ukraine and the other western allies. But he apparently still has the support of his special envoy.This week, the Guardian reported that Kellogg told a Council on Foreign Relations meeting of the suspension of intelligence sharing that “they brought it on themselves, the Ukrainians,” and that it was a punishment akin to “hitting a mule with a two-by-four across the nose”. More

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      How Pete Hegseth is pushing his beliefs on US agency: ‘nothing to prepare forces’

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      More than 50 days into Donald Trump’s second administration and his Department of Defense is already rapidly transforming into the image of its secretary, Pete Hegseth.Now, many of the rants and opinions common during Hegseth’s Fox News career are coming to policy fruition in his new Pentagon.Hegseth inaugurated himself by scolding his Nato allies and confirming the US would never accept Ukraine into the alliance. Then his Pentagon immediately made leadership changes targeting women and people of color. He oversaw total deletions of all diversity, equity and inclusion programs, all the while slashing whole sections of the military overseeing civilian harm reduction in theatres of combat.Combining all of that with his connections to Christian nationalism and a pastor who said slavery brought “affection between the races” has led to calls from former defense department officials that the new secretary is actively damaging his own agency.“What are we seeing in the Pentagon right now? What are we hearing about the future of warfare? What are we hearing about the transformation that is necessary, right now, as we come out of the last two decades of warfighting?” said the retired brigadier general Paul Eaton, a veteran of the Iraq war. “We’re hearing of DEI purging.”Eaton continued: “We’re hearing about taking a Black four-star out of the seniormost position in the armed forces of the United States; a female four-star removed, who was the first chief of naval operations; a four-star female taken out of the coast guard.”In any national military, fighting cohesion and faith in the chain of command is paramount. But Eaton says Hegseth is a “Saturday showman on Fox News” unfit for the office he occupies and has undermined his troops at every turn.Eaton explained that mass firings and transgender bans have distracted from learning lessons from the war in Ukraine and the coming global conflict many inside the Pentagon have been predicting for years. Most of all, Hegseth’s focus on culture war is actively neglecting the “warfighters” he constantly invokes.“What we’re seeing is nibbling around the edges of a culture with a dominant theme that does nothing to prepare the armed forces of the United States to meet its next peer or near peer opponent,” said Eaton.In a period where the Pentagon has struggled to meet recruitment numbers, Hegseth’s dismissal of top female officers and his historical attitude towards gender is not making enlistment a top attraction among women.“Comments that question the qualifications and accomplishments of women in uniform are deeply disrespectful of the sacrifices these service members and their families have made for our country,” said Caroline Zier, the former deputy chief of staff to the last secretary of defense, Lloyd J Austin III, and a VoteVets senior policy adviser. “Secretary Hegseth risks alienating and undermining the women who currently serve, while decreasing the likelihood that other women look to join the military at exactly the moment when we need all qualified recruits.”Hegseth’s office also had social sciences and DEI research axed in a memo announced in early March. The cost cutting measure will save $30m a year in Pentagon funding of internal studies, “on global migration patterns, climate change impacts, and social trends”.In a post on X, Hegseth said: “[DoD] does not do climate change crap. We do training and warfighting.” Those comments match up with his complaint that under the Biden administration the military somehow weakened soldier standards and focused its efforts away from fighting wars in favor of adopting liberal subcultures.“The truth is the United States military is the most lethal fighting force in the history of the world, and the Department of Defense never took its eye off warfighting and meritocracy,” said Zier. “I saw that up close over the course of 15 years working at the Department of Defense, across administrations.”Tough talk about “warfighting” and “lethality” has also followed an obsession within the Trump administration with special forces units – the types that carry out drone strikes or a mission such as the one that killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011. Hegseth and Trump, for example, were dogged defenders of Eddie Gallagher, a Navy Seal pardoned by Trump for war crimes in Iraq.But special operations missions, especially when they have led to civilian carnage, have the propensity to create enemies across the globe if unneeded collateral damage occurs. Which is why new and evolving watchdog policies governing how covert actions are carried out were adopted across the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations of the past. By 2023, Austin instituted new orders surrounding civilian harm mitigation.But Hegseth has closed the Pentagon’s Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response office and the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, which both handled training and procedures critical in limiting civilian harm in theatres of war. Coupled with plans to overhaul the judge advocate general’s corps to remake the rules of war governing the US military, all signs point to a Pentagon more prone to tragic mistakes.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEaton thinks that is shortsighted and ignores lessons learned.“When I was in Iraq in 2004 developing the Iraqi armed forces,” said Eaton. “I would stand up in front of my Iraqi soldiers and I would make a case for the most important component of the US military: our judicial system and the good order and discipline of the armed forces.”But then, Eaton added, something happened that undermined those words: “Abu Ghraib”.Not only was Hegseth a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he was also a major veteran voice that railed against the Biden administration’s handling of withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Part of that included criticisms of abandoning allies, and yet Hegseth’s time at the top of the Pentagon has coincided with the unprecedented undermining of global alliances – suspending things such as offensive cyber missions countering Russia – which has blemished confidence in military interoperability and intelligence sharing.Ukraine, at risk of becoming the new Afghan government cutoff from American military support, is fighting for its national survival against a superior Russian force.In early March, the Pentagon froze critical intelligence and weapons packages as Trump repostured the US position on the conflict. That kind of uncertainty has borne real fears on the ground of the most deadly war in Europe since the second world war.“I think the Ukrainians and all of us working here regardless of nationality, are anxious about what the future of US support looks like,” said a former US marine currently living in Ukraine and working on defense technologies near the frontlines. “We’re all hoping that the US will do the right thing and provide the Ukrainians the tools they need to end this war and secure their future.”But so far, Hegseth has instead shown he’s turning the Pentagon’s gaze toward the border in Mexico, another obsession during his time on air, for the first time in over a century and to the containment of China. Ukraine, Nato and the many Pentagon cuts are in the backseat.The Pentagon did not respond to several emails with a detailed list of questions about Hegseth’s personal impact on policy making on the department he leads. More

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      Republican Russophilia: how Trump Putin-ised a party of cold war hawks

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      In speech that ran for 100 minutes there was one moment when Donald Trump drew more applause from Democrats than Republicans. As the president told Congress last week how the US had sent billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine, his political opponents clapped and unfurled a Ukrainian flag – while his own party sat in stony silence.It was a telling insight into Republicans’ transformation, in the space of a generation, from a party of cold war hawks to one of “America first” isolationists. Where Trump has led, many Republicans have obediently followed, all the way into the embrace of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin – with huge implications for the global democratic order.“The reversal is dramatic and the willingness of the Republican party to go along with it continues to be breathtaking,” said Charlie Sykes, a political commentator and author of How the Right Lost Its Mind. “At least for a while it appeared that Republicans were still going to be supportive of Ukraine. But now that Trump has completely reversed our foreign policy there seems to be very little pushback.”Last month, Trump set up a peace process that began with the US and Russia’s top diplomats meeting in Saudi Arabia – with no seat at the table for Ukrainian officials. He branded Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a “dictator”, a term he has never applied to the authoritarian Putin.Along with Vice-President JD Vance, he berated Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, a spectacle that prompted the Democratic senator Elissa Slotkin to observe that Ronald Reagan, a Republican president who was an inveterate foe of Soviet aggression, “must be rolling over in his grave”. Trump suspended offensive cyber operations against Russia and paused military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine until it agreed to a 30-day ceasefire.The Oval Office shakedown shocked the world but there was strikingly little criticism from Republicans. The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, sank into a couch and said nothing as the shouting raged around him. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who had previously been supportive of Zelenskyy, even suggested that the Ukrainian president should resign.Speaking at a Center for American Progress thinktank event in Washington this week, Patrick Gaspard, a former Obama administration official, said: “What you fundamentally believe matters little if you’re acting against those beliefs.“It was astonishing to see Republican leaders who on a Monday were praising Zelenskyy and by the Tuesday were removing any reference to him from their websites. It’s an extraordinary thing to see people who used to be pretty serious on this issue, like Lindsey Graham, suddenly saying the things.”Meanwhile, other Russia hawks such as the former vice-president Mike Pence, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger have been sidelined. Republicans who were not shy about countering Trump’s foreign policy ideas during his first term are now standing by him – in public at least.Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations thinktank and author of Reagan: His Life and Legend, said: “Absent Trump, I don’t think you would see this reorientation of the Republican party. Even with Trump a lot of Republicans, especially on Capitol Hill, are very uneasy about it and don’t like what Trump is doing but they’re afraid to speak out.”View image in fullscreenOthers suggest that loyalty to or fear of Trump may not be the only explanation. Younger Republicans are questioning the legitimacy of institutions such as Nato and the United Nations and following far-right influencers such as Tucker Carlson, who interviewed Putin in Russia last year and claimed that Moscow was “so much nicer than any city in my country”.Critics say Trump, Carlson and the “Make America great again” movement see in Russia an idealised version of white Christian nationalism, in contrast to the “woke” values of western Europe. Putin has mocked the US embassy for flying a rainbow flag and suggested that transgenderism is “on the verge of a crime against humanity”.From this perspective, the struggle is no longer capitalism against communism but rather woke against unwoke. In various speeches Putin has railed against the west’s “obsessive emphasis on race”, “modern cancel culture” and “reverse racism”. He said of the west: “They invented five or six genders: transformers, trans – you see, I do not even understand what it is.”All are familiar talking points from the Maga playbook. Indeed, last year, on the rightwing strategist Steven Bannon’s War Room podcast, the Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said: “Let’s talk about what this really is, Steve: this is a war against Christianity. The Ukrainian government is attacking Christians; the Ukrainian government is executing priests. Russia is not doing that; they’re not attacking Christianity. As a matter of fact, they seem to be protecting it.”Bannon has made no secret of his desire to bring down the European Union and “globalist” forces. Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant secretary of state under Barack Obama, draws a comparison with conservative “red” states and liberal “blue” states within the US. “Let’s make it real American tangible,” he said. “Russia is a red state and France and England and Nato – they’re blue states.”During the cold war, it was hardline anti-communism that was core to the Republican brand. Reagan branded the Soviet Union as the “evil empire” and stepped up US military spending. But when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union in 1985, relations improved.Reagan and Gorbachev held several summits that led to key arms control agreements. Reagan’s successor, George HW Bush, worked closely with Gorbachev and, later, Boris Yeltsin as the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, encouraging a transition to democracy and capitalism.View image in fullscreenEarly in Republican George W Bush’s presidency, he had a relatively positive relationship with Putin, memorably saying he had “looked into Putin’s soul” and found him trustworthy. The two cooperated on counter-terrorism following the 9/11 attacks but tensions grew over the Iraq war and US support for Georgia and Ukraine.By 2008, when Russia invaded Georgia, relations had significantly deteriorated. Obama, a Democrat, initially pursued a “reset” policy with Russia, aiming to improve relations, but tensions resurfaced after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and supported separatists in eastern Ukraine. In response, Obama imposed sanctions on Russia and expelled diplomats.Russia launched an aggressive effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election on Trump’s behalf, according to a later Senate intelligence committee report, which found extensive evidence of contacts between the Trump campaign advisers and Kremlin officials and other Russians.Trump vehemently denied collusion even as his administration imposed sanctions on Russia. At a joint press conference in Helsinki in 2018, Trump sided with the Russian president over his own intelligence agencies. He has remained unwilling to criticise Putin, even after Russia invaded Ukraine and after the opposition activist Alexei Navalny died in prison.The Putin-isation of the Republican party should perhaps not be overstated. Older senators such as Mitch McConnell, who is retiring at the next election, Thom Tillis and Roger Wicker remain staunchly supportive of Ukraine.Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said: “I push back against the idea that Republicans have become entranced with Putin because there’s not evidence for that. There is evidence that Republicans have become tired of the fight in Ukraine. These things are not the same.”However, the balance appears to be shifting as the cold war fades into memory. About 41% of Republicans view Russia as either “friendly” or an “ally”, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll released earlier this month. And just 27% of Republicans agree with the statement that Trump is too close to Moscow, according to a Reuters/Ipsos survey.View image in fullscreenAdam Smith, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives’ armed services committee, told the Guardian of the “Make American great again” movement: “They have definitely shown a sympathy for Vladimir Putin’s autocratic, ‘traditional’ values, which are very troubling if you care about the problems of bigotry and discrimination. There is growing sympathy and the wing of the Republican party that’s against that is getting weaker while the other wing is getting stronger.”He added: “They believe that they’re going to promote ‘traditional values’ and they see Putin as an ideological ally in that. I still think it is a minority within the Republican party but Trump’s the president. He’s the leader of that party and they’re adhering to him. Trump has an enormous amount of sympathy for that worldview and more and more of them are drifting in that direction.”Bill Galston, a former policy adviser to Bill Clinton, said: “The Republican party during the cold war was anti-communist and from their standpoint, once communism disappeared, their major motive for opposing Russia did as well.“The fact that Russia is a rightwing autocracy doesn’t particularly trouble them. To the extent that Putin has refashioned himself as a traditionalist culture warrior, he’s actually making an affirmative appeal to what the Republican party has become.” More

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      There can be no ‘Israel exception’ for free speech | Kenneth Roth

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      The Trump administration’s threatened deportation of Mahmoud Khalil seems to reflect a dangerous disregard for freedom of expression – a blatant example of official censorship to curb criticism of Israel.Khalil was a recent graduate of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He holds a green card, giving him permanent residence status, and is married to a US citizen. They are expecting their first child soon. Immigration agents arrested him last week in his university housing and sent him for detention from New York City to Louisiana. He had been a leader of protests against Israeli war crimes in Gaza.Beyond that, the facts are contested. His friends called him “kind, expressive and gentle”. A Columbia professor described him as “someone who seeks mediated resolutions through speech and dialogue. This is not someone who engages in violence, or gets people riled up to do dangerous things.”But Donald Trump, hailing his arrest, suggested Khalil was among students “who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity”. The administration has presented no facts to back up these assertions, but even were it to do so, the suggestion that permissible speech can be a basis for deportation is deeply troubling. Trump vowed more such deportation efforts.Ordinarily, the first amendment protects even offensive speech. Although the government retains greater latitude to deport non-citizens, Trump’s rhetoric suggests an intention to step way over the line of propriety. What does it mean to be “anti-American”? As we saw during the McCarthy era, people can face that accusation for a wide range of legitimate political views. Such campaigns are the antithesis of the free debate that is essential for US democracy.As for the charge of “antisemitism”, Trump seems to be fueling a disturbing tendency to use claims of antisemitism to silence criticism of the Israeli government. Antisemitism is a serious problem that threatens Jews around the world. But if people see accusations of antisemitism as mere efforts to censor critics of Israel, it would cheapen the concept at a time when the defense against real antisemitism is urgently needed.Even Trump’s unsupported suggestion that Khalil is “pro-terrorist” needs unpacking. To begin with, opposing Israel’s indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on Palestinian civilians, as well as its starvation of them, does not make anyone pro-terrorist. Israel is required to carry out its military response to Hamas’s appalling murders and abductions of 7 October 2023 in accordance with international humanitarian law. War crimes by one side never support war crimes by the other. Pointing that out, if that’s what Khalil did, does not make him “pro-terrorist”; it makes him pro-civilian.The Trump administration’s retaliation against Khalil is part of its larger attack on campus protests against Israeli war crimes in Gaza. Just days earlier, the administration announced the withdrawal of $400m in federal funding from Columbia for supposedly failing to protect Jewish students and faculty during anti-Israel protests, the vast majority of which were entirely peaceful. Other universities have now been threatened with a similar suspension of their funding.Coincidentally, I spoke on the Columbia campus days before Khalil’s detention. As a Jew, I did not feel the least bit threatened. Indeed, many of the protesters against Israeli atrocities have been Jewish. Again, Trump’s pretext for censoring critics of Israel is transparently thin.If we tolerate an Israel exception to our rights of free speech, we can be sure that other exceptions will follow. Trump likes to half-jokingly refer to himself as a “king”. Are we heading toward a Thailand-style lèse majesté under which criticism of the king is criminalized?But censoring criticism of Israel is a poor strategy even for protecting Israel. Trump’s plan to “solve” Israel’s Palestinian problem by forcibly deporting millions of Palestinians would be a huge war crime; it has been rightly rejected by the Arab states that Trump envisioned receiving the refugees or later paying to rebuild Gaza.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFailing that plan, the Israeli government would prefer the status quo – endless occupation – but the world increasingly rejects that option as apartheid, as did the international court of justice in July. Another option would be to recognize the “one-state reality” created by Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, but the Israeli government refuses to provide equal rights to all residents. Roughly the same number of Jews and Arabs like between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, so Israel would lose its Jewish majority.The most realistic, legal and enduring option remains a two-state solution, an Israeli and Palestinian state living side by side in peace. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has devoted his political career to avoiding a Palestinian state, but it is the best prospect for lasting peace.In pressing Netanyahu to agree to the current temporary ceasefire in Gaza, Trump showed his capacity to exert pressure on the Israeli government to take steps toward peace that it resists. He could do the same for a two-state solution.But to build a political support for this important step, we need free debate in the United States. Trump’s efforts to censor criticism of Israeli misconduct is a recipe for endless war and atrocities. Free speech is required if we hope to do better. Trump should reverse his misguided effort to deport Khalil.

      Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch (1993-2022), is a visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. His book Righting Wrongs was just published by Knopf More

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      Greenland’s likely new prime minister rejects Trump takeover efforts

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      Greenland’s probable new prime minister has rejected Donald Trump’s effort to take control of the island, saying Greenlanders must be allowed to decide their own future as it moves toward independence from Denmark.Jens-Frederik Nielsen, whose centre-right Democrats won a surprise victory in this week’s legislative elections and now must form a coalition government, pushed back on Thursday against Trump’s repeated claims that the US will annex the island.“We don’t want to be Americans. No, we don’t want to be Danes. We want to be Greenlanders, and we want our own independence in the future,” Nielsen, 33, told Sky News. “And we want to build our own country by ourselves.”Greenland’s outgoing prime minister, Múte Egede, said he would convene a meeting of party leaders to jointly reject Trump’s threats, warning: “Enough is enough.”“This time we need to toughen our rejection of Trump. People cannot continue to disrespect us,” Egede wrote on Facebook.Egede continues to lead Greenland while a new government is formed.“The American president has once again evoked the idea of annexing us. I absolutely cannot accept that,” he wrote.“I respect the result of the election, but I consider that I have an obligation as interim head of government: I have therefore asked the administration to summon the party heads as soon as possible.”The comments came after Trump repeated his vow to take over the island on Thursday.During an Oval Office meeting with the Nato secretary general Mark Rutte, Trump claimed that Greenland’s election had been “very good for us,” adding: “The person who did the best is a very good person, as far as we’re concerned.”Asked whether he thought the US would annex Greenland, Trump said: “I think it’ll happen.”Trump said that “Denmark’s very far away” from Greenland and questioned whether that country still had a right to claim the world’s largest island.“A boat landed there 200 years ago or something. And they say they have rights to it,” Trump said. “I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t think it is, actually.”Trump said US control of Greenland could be important for national security reasons and even suggested Nato should be involved, but Rutte demurred.With most Greenlanders opposing Trump’s overtures, the election campaign focused more on issues such as healthcare and education than on geopolitics.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe 31 men and women elected to parliament on Tuesday will have to set priorities for issues such as diversifying Greenland’s economy, building infrastructure and improving healthcare, as well as shaping the country’s strategy for countering the US president’s “America first” agenda.The Democrats won 29.9% of the vote by campaigning to improve housing and educational standards while delaying independence until Greenland is self-sufficient. Four years ago, the party finished in fourth place with 9.1%.Nuuk resident Anthon Nielsen said the party’s victory would be good for the country.“Most politicians want Greenland to be independent,” he said. “But this party who won, they don’t want to hurry things, so everything must be done right.”Carina Ren, head of the Arctic program at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, said the results show that Greenlanders tried to ignore Trump and focus on issues that were important to them.“The voters have been able to drag down all the drama, all the alarmist talk from the outside to say: ‘Well, this is about our everyday lives, our everyday concerns as citizens. Where are we going, how are we going to develop our society from the inside.’”Now, Demokraatit will have to turn its attention to forming a governing coalition.Naleraq, the most aggressively pro-independence party, finished in second place, with 24.5% of the vote. It was followed by Inuit Ataqatigiit, which led the last government, at 21.4%. More

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      EU retaliates against Trump tariffs with €26bn ‘countermeasures’

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      The EU has announced it will impose trade “countermeasures” on €26bn (£22bn) worth of US goods in retaliation after Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, escalating a global trade war.The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, called the 25% US levies on global imports of the metals “unjustified trade restrictions”, after they came into force at 4am GMT on Wednesday.“We deeply regret this measure,” von der Leyen said in a statement, as Brussels announced it would be “launching a series of countermeasures” on 1 April. “The European Union must act to protect consumers and business,” she added.The commission said it would be targeting industrial products in response, including steel and aluminium, as well as household tools, plastics and wooden goods.In addition, the EU measures will affect some US agricultural products, such as poultry, beef, some seafood, nuts, eggs, dairy, sugar and vegetables, provided they are approved by member states.The retaliatory measures will also entail Brussels reimposing the tariffs on US goods including bourbon whiskey, jeans and Harley-Davidson motorbikes that it introduced during the first Trump term.“We will always remain open to negotiation. We firmly believe that in a world fraught with geopolitical and economic uncertainties, it is not in our common interest to burden our economies with tariffs,” von der Leyen said.France’s European affairs minister, Benjamin Haddad, said on Wednesday that the EU could “go further” in its response to the US tariffs. The measures “are proportionate”, Haddad told TF1 television. “If it came to a situation where we had to go further, digital services or intellectual property could be included,” he said.Britain would not issue its own immediate measures in response to the US tariffs but was going to “reserve our right to retaliate”, a UK minister said.The exchequer secretary to the Treasury, James Murray, told Times Radio the levies were disappointing but “we want to take a pragmatic approach, and we’re already negotiating rapidly toward an economic agreement with the US, with the potential to eliminate additional tariffs”.Asked by Sky News whether Britain’s response to the levies could be called weak in comparison with Brussels, Murray said the UK was in a “very different position than the EU” and does not want to be “pushed off course” as it pursues a trade deal with Washington.“We think the right response is to continue pragmatically, cool-headedly, without a knee-jerk response, but toward our economic agreement that we’re negotiating with the US to secure, because that’s in the best interests of the UK,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHis comments came after the prime minister, Keir Starmer, said on Tuesday that Britain would not respond with its own counter-tariffs, after last-ditch efforts to persuade Trump to spare British industry from his global tariffs appeared to have failed.The UK steel industry warned that Trump’s tariffs “couldn’t come at a worse time”, and said the move would have “hugely damaging consequences for UK suppliers and their customers in the US”.Gareth Stace, the director general of the trade association UK Steel, called the Trump administration’s move “hugely disappointing”. He said: “President Trump must surely recognise that the UK is an ally, not a foe. Our steel sector is not a threat to the US but a partner to key customers, sharing the same values and objectives in addressing global overcapacity and tackling unfair trade.“These tariffs couldn’t come at a worse time for the UK steel industry, as we battle with high energy costs and subdued demand at home, against an oversupplied and increasingly protectionist global landscape.”The introduction of EU measures came after a day of drama on Tuesday, when Trump threatened to double tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium in response to Canadian threats to increase electricity prices for US customers.The US president backed off from those plans after the Ontario premier, Doug Ford, agreed to suspend his province’s decision to impose a 25% surcharge on electricity exports to the states of Minnesota, Michigan and New York. More

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      Trump threatens to raise Canadian steel and aluminum tariffs to 50%

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      The looming trade war between the US and Canada escalated on Tuesday as Donald Trump threatened to double tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum after Canadian threats to increase electricity prices for US customers.On Tuesday morning Trump announced plans to double tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum from 25% to 50% and once again threatened to annex Canada as retaliation for the province of Ontario’s imposition of a 25% surcharge on electricity exports to several US states, in a dramatic escalation of the trade war between the two ostensibly allied countries.The news set off another stock market sell-off on Wall Street that was tempered when Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, said he made a deal with the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, to suspend Canada’s 25% tariff on exports of electricity to Michigan, New York and Minnesota after Lutnick agreed to discuss renewing existing trade relations.Incorrectly calling Canada “one of the highest tariffing nations anywhere in the world”, Trump said he had instructed his secretary of commerce to increase levies on the metals due to start Wednesday morning. He also threatened more tariffs on 2 April on the car industry that would “essentially, permanently shut down the automobile manufacturing business in Canada”.Asking rhetorically why the US received electricity from another country, he accused Canada of using energy, “that so affects the life of innocent people, as a bargaining chip and threat” and said “they will pay a financial price for this so big that it will be read about in History Books for many years to come”.After the news that Ontario was suspending its electricity hikes, Trump said he would “probably” reconsider imposing the higher tariffs on Canada.Mark Carney, Canada’s incoming prime minister, called Trump’s latest move “an attack on Canadian workers, families and businesses” and promised to “keep our tariffs on until the Americans show us respect and make credible, reliable commitments to free and fair trade”.The Trump administration was also reportedly preparing on Tuesday to institute a new rule that would require some Canadians staying in the US for more than 30 days to register personal information and agree to fingerprinting, according to Bloomberg. Currently there is largely frictionless travel for citizens between the two countries.The fractious economic battle between the US and Canada has developed even graver undertones as Trump makes increasingly aggressive threats for the US to absorb its northern neighbour. Although at first claiming that he wanted Canada to crack down on fentanyl, Trump has now accused the US ally of underpaying for military protection and incorrectly described the trade imbalance with Canada as a $200bn subsidy from the US.Trump coupled his tariff declaration with openly aggressive language about making Canada “our cherished Fifty First State”, repeating a constant refrain over the last few months. He claimed American statehood for Canada would make “all tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear”, called the border “an artificial line of separation drawn many years ago” and suggested the Canadian national anthem, O Canada, would become a state anthem.The rhetoric has inspired a rare unity among Canadian politicians, with Carney campaigning for Liberal leader on standing up to Trump, and saying to a standing ovation in his acceptance speech on Sunday that “Canada never, ever will be part of America”.Trump’s moves are just the latest in the chaos around the president’s trade policy, amid tumbling stock markets and fears it could trigger a possible US recession.The White House’s strategy so far has been to play down the anxiety on Wall Street, even as stocks waver. After Trump refused to rule out the possibility of a recession in an interview with Fox News over the weekend, the Nasdaq had its worst day on Monday since September 2022, dropping 4%.Shares in US automakers also fell after the announcement, as traders bet that high metal tariffs would drive up costs for the American industrial sector, eating into their profits. Ford Motor dropped nearly 4%, while General Motors dipped by 1.3%. Shares in the carmaker Stellantis – which has several manufacturing facilities in Canada – fell by more than 5%.Price premiums for aluminum on US physical market soared to a record high above $990 a metric ton, Reuters reported.The Ontario premier Ford has said that Trump must take the blame if there is a recession in the US, telling MSNBC on Tuesday: “If we go into a recession, it will be called the Trump recession.”Ford has said in the past that he would be willing to cut off US energy supply from Canada completely in response to Trump’s tariffs.“We will be relentless,” Ford said, adding he would not “hesitate” to shut off electricity exports to the US if Trump continues the trade war.“That’s the last thing I want to do. I want to send more electricity down to the US, to our closest allies or our best neighbors in the world. I want to send more electricity.” But, he said, “Is it a tool in our toolkit? One hundred per cent, and as he continues to hurt Canadian families, Ontario families, I won’t hesitate to do that.”Ford also encouraged American CEOs, who have been largely silent on the trade war and threats to Canadian sovereignty, to speak up. On Tuesday Trump is set to meet with the Business Roundtable, an influential group of business leaders that includes the CEOs of Google, Amazon and JPMorgan.Ford said: “We need those CEOs to actually get a backbone and stand in front of him and tell him, ‘This is going to be a disaster. It’s mass chaos right now.’”The group said in a statement last week that while it supported trade policies that “open markets to US exports, revitalize the domestic manufacturing base and de-risk supply chains”, it called on the White House to “preserve the benefits” of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which Trump himself signed in 2020 but has since apparently violated by suddenly imposing steep tariffs on both countries.Tariffs of 25% on steel and aluminum imports were already slated to apply to all countries globally on Wednesday, after Trump announced them last month.Both consumer and business confidence has dropped in the US since Trump entered office.A survey published on Monday in Chief Executive magazine found that CEOs’ rating of the current business climate fell 20% in January, from 6.3 out of 10 – with 1 being “poor” and 10 being “excellent” – to 5, the lowest since spring 2020.
      Meanwhile, consumer confidence measured by the Conference Board found that confidence dropped over 6% in February, its biggest month-to-month drop since August 2021.Trump had not yet spoken with Carney, said the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday, arguing that the tariffs on Canadian metals “was a retaliatory statement due to the escalation of rhetoric that we’ve seen out of Ontario, Canada”.“I think Canada is a neighbor. They are a partner. They have always been an ally,” she said, adding: “Perhaps they are becoming a competitor now.” More