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    Mark Milley fears being court-martialed if Trump wins, Woodward book says

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    Mark Milley, a retired US army general who was chair of the joint chiefs of staff under Donald Trump and Joe Biden, fears being recalled to uniform and court-martialed should Trump defeat Kamala Harris next month and return to power.“He is a walking, talking advertisement of what he’s going to try to do,” Milley recently “warned former colleagues”, the veteran Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward writes in an upcoming book. “He’s saying it and it’s not just him, it’s the people around him.”Woodward cites Steve Bannon, Trump’s former campaign chair and White House strategist now jailed for contempt of Congress, as saying of Milley: “We’re gonna hold him accountable.”Trump’s wish to recall and court-martial retired senior officers who criticized him in print has been reported before, including by Mark Esper, Trump’s second secretary of defense. In Woodward’s telling, in a 2020 Oval Office meeting with Milley and Esper, Trump “yelled” and “shouted” about William McRaven, a former admiral who led the 2011 raid in Pakistan in which US special forces killed Osama bin Laden, and Stanley McChrystal, the retired special forces general whose men killed another al-Qaida leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in Iraq in 2006.Milley was able to persuade Trump to back down, Woodward writes, but fears no such guardrails will be in place if Trump is re-elected.Woodward also describes Milley receiving “a non-stop barrage of death threats” since his retirement last year, and quotes the former general as telling him, of Trump: “No one has ever been as dangerous to this country.”Milley spoke to Woodward for his previous reporting. Woodward now reports the former general as saying: “He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country.“A fascist to the core.”Woodward, 81, made his name in the 1970s with Carl Bernstein during Watergate, the scandal that brought down Richard Nixon. Woodward’s new blockbuster, War, will be published on Tuesday. His fourth book at least in part about Trump – after Fear, Rage, and Peril – stoked uproar this week with the release of revelations including that Trump sent Covid testing machines to Vladimir Putin early in the coronavirus pandemic, and that Trump has had as many as seven phone calls with the Russian president since leaving office.Milley was chair of the joint chiefs of staff from 2019 to 2023. His attempts to cope with Trump have been widely reported – particularly in relation to Trump’s demands for military action against protesters for racial justice in the summer of 2020 and, later that year, Trump’s attempt to stay in power despite losing the election to Biden.Last year, marking his retirement, Milley appeared to take a direct swipe at Trump, then a candidate for a third successive Republican presidential nomination.“We don’t take an oath to a king, or queen, or tyrant or a dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator,” Milley told a military audience at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia. “We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.”Since then, Trump has brushed aside Republican rivals to seize the nomination, campaigned against first Biden then Harris, and survived two assassination attempts. Less than a month from election day, he and Harris are locked in a tight race.In office, Trump memorably insisted senior military officers owed their loyalty to him, even reportedly telling his second chief of staff, the retired marine general John Kelly, US generals should “be like the German generals” who Trump insisted were “totally loyal” to Adolf Hitler during the second world war. Kelly mentioned military assassination plots against Hitler but Trump was not convinced.As told by Woodward, in 2020 Trump became enraged by pieces McRaven wrote for the Washington Post and the New York Times – writing in the Post that “there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil” – and comments McChrystal made on CNN, calling Trump “immoral” and “dishonest”.“As commander-in-chief” of US armed forces, Woodward writes, “Trump had extraordinary power over retired commissioned officers. It was within his authority to recall them to active duty and court-martial them. But it had only been done a few times in American history and for very serious crimes. For instance, when a retired two-star [general] was charged in 2017 with six counts of raping a minor while on active duty in the 1980s.”So Trump summoned Milley and Esper. The president demanded action but the two men told him not to seek to punish McRaven and McChrystal, because they had a right to voice their opinions and because it would backfire, drawing attention to their words.“The president didn’t want to hear it,” Woodward writes.So Milley switched tack.“‘Mr President,’ Milley said. ‘I’m the senior military officer responsible for the good order and discipline of general officers and I’ll take care of this.’“Trump’s head whipped round. ‘You really will?’ he asked skeptically.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“‘Absolutely,’ Milley assured him.“‘OK, you take care of it,’ President Trump said.”Such dramatic Oval Office scenes are familiar from previous books by Woodward and legions of competing reporters and former Trump officials. According to Woodward’s new reporting, Milley did take action after fending Trump off, calling McRaven and McChrystal and warning them to “step off the public stage”.“‘Pull it back,’ Milley said. If Trump actually used his authority to recall them to duty, there was little Milley could do.”Woodward then quotes Milley speaking this year about his fear that Trump will seek to punish his military critics if he returns to power.McRaven, now a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Milley’s fear of retribution and whether he shared it.Trump has given such figures plenty of reason to worry. Among proliferating campaign-trail controversies, the former president has frequently voiced his desire for revenge on opponents and critics, including by using the FBI and Department of Justice to mount politically motivated investigations. At rallies, Trump has frequently told crowds: “I am your retribution.”The Utah senator Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, was recently asked about possible consequences of his own opposition to Trump including votes to convict in both his impeachment trials.“I think he has shown by his prior actions that you can take him at his word,” a “suddenly subdued” Romney told the Atlantic. “So I would take him at his word.”Woodward also reports Milley’s harrowing experiences since stepping down as chair of the joint chiefs.“Since retiring, Milley had received a non-stop barrage of death threats that he, at least in part, attributed to Trump’s repeated attempts to discredit him.“‘He is inciting people to violence with violent rhetoric,’ Milley told his wife. ‘But he does it in such a way it’s through the power of suggestion, which is exactly what he did on 6 January” 2021, the day Trump incited supporters to attack Congress, in hope of overturning his election defeat.“As a former chairman, Milley was provided round-the-clock government security for two years. But he had taken additional precautions at significant personal expense, installing bullet-proof glass and blast-proof curtains at his home.” More

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      Trump rally shooting: Biden says ‘there is no place in America for this kind of violence’; attendee who was killed is identified – latest updates

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      Donald Trump has published his second statement on Truth Social since the Pennsylvania shooting on Saturday. In it, the former Republican president said he looks forward to speaking from Wisconsin where the Republican national convention (RNC) will be held this week.Trump wrote:
      Thank you to everyone for your thoughts and prayers yesterday, as it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.
      We will fear not, but instead remain resilient in our faith and defiant in the face of wickedness. Our love goes out to the other victims and their families.
      We pray for the recovery of those who were wounded, and hold in our hearts the memory of the citizen who was so horribly killed.
      In this moment, it is more important than ever that we stand united, and show our true character as Americans, remaining strong and determined, and not allowing evil to win.
      I truly love our country, and love you all, and look forward to speaking to our great nation this week from Wisconsin. DJT
      The Republicans’ convention will take place from July 15-18 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with the Fiserv Forum, home of the Milwaukee Bucks, earmarked to be the main venue.Wisconsin is one of a handful of battleground states likely to determine this year’s presidential race. It was one of the so-called “blue wall” states that Democrats once relied on, but Trump narrowly won in 2016, paving the way for his victory. Biden flipped the state back in 2020, and both campaigns are targeting it heavily this year.It’s time to be “a little less partisan,” swing state Democratic congressman saysGreg Landsman, a Democratic congressman running in a competitive, Democratic-leaning district in Ohio, has released a long statement on the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, calling for bipartisan cooperation and less partisanship in the days to come.“We need to lean on one another, and to show more grace and kindness. We need to talk about what we believe in and do so with the greatest amount of thoughtfulness and care,” he wrote, citing scripture and calling for a change in tone across the country.Just a few days ago, Landsman was making headlines for raising questions about whether Joe Biden should continue as the Democratic nominee for president, saying “it’s becoming increasingly likely that this may be just too high of a hill for him to climb” and that Biden needed to be able to make a clear case against Trump.It’s not yet fully clear how the Democratic congressional candidates’ views on Biden staying in the race will change as the country reacts to an attempted Trump assassination.In Fox News call, Trump reportedly praises Biden for check-in call, describes shootingIn what was described as a 15-minute phone call with Fox News’ Brett Baier, Donald Trump reportedly “praised president Biden for the phone call” he made to Trump and called it a “good conversation,” Baier said.The former president is en route to Milwaukee, Baier said.Trump told Baier that he had just turned his head to the side to look at an infographic on immigration statistics when he described feeling something like “the biggest mosquito of his lifetime” or “bumblebee that sort of feels like in his ear,” Baier said. Then Trump described looking at his hand and seeing blood, and going down.Trump said that when he his raised fist to the crowd, he had actually wanted to go back and say a few words to his supporters, but the secret service was hurrying him offstage.Rally shooting suspect’s family is cooperating with the investigation, FBI saysAn FBI official tells the Associated Press that the suspected shooter’s family is cooperating with federal investigators.Relatives of Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, have not returned multiple messages from The Associated Press seeking comment.The suspect’s father, Matthew Crooks, previously told CNN in a phone call late Saturday night that he was trying to understand “what the hell is going on” and would “wait until I talk to law enforcement” before speaking further.The FBI said it believes the AR-style rifle the Trump rally shooter used was legally purchased by the suspect’s father, the Associated Press reported previously, and that it was not clear how the suspect had obtained the weapon.“These are facts that we’ll flesh out as we conduct interviews,” Kevin Rojek, an FBI special agent in charge of the Pittsburgh Field Office, told reporters, the Associated Press reported.Joe Biden offers condolences to family of Trump supporter killed at campaign rally “He was a father protecting his family from the bullets being fired,” Joe Biden wrote on his official presidential account, in a tribute to 50-year-old Corey Comperatore, who attended the rally with his family.Read more about tributes to Comperatore, who has been described by family members as a “hero” who died shielding his daughters from gunfire.“What my precious girls had to witness is unforgivable,” his wife, Helen Comperatore, wrote on Facebook.Biden will travel to Las Vegas on Monday for NAACP civil rights addressThe White House has confirmed that Joe Biden will travel to Las Vegas, Nevada tomorrow.The NAACP, a more than century-old civil rights group that advocates for the rights of Black Americans, previously announced that Biden would serve as a keynote speaker for its 115th national convention.Attorney general calls attack on Trump “ an attack on our democracy itself”In a press call with reporters, attorney general Merrick Garland said he was “grateful that former President Trump is safe following yesterday’s horrific assassination attempt,” and said that “the violence that we saw yesterday is an attack on our democracy itself.”More details continue to emerge on the 20-year-old suspect in the rally shooting, Thomas Matthew Crooks, though what has been made public so far still leaves more questions than answers. Read the full story on what we know so far about the young suspect, who was a registered Republican, but had also made a $15 donation to the Progressive Turnout Project in 2021.

      The FBI says they believe the “AR-style rifle the Trump rally shooter used was legally purchased by the gunman’s father,” the Associated Press reports. “Kevin Rojek, special agent in charge of the Pittsburgh Field Office, told reporters that authorities don’t yet know how the shooter gained access to the weapon, and whether he took it without his father’s knowledge.”

      FBI officials “have not yet identified an ideology” for the suspect, “but they are combing through his social media feeds and the shooter’s weapons. So far, they have not found any threatening writing or social media posts,” the Associated Press reports. They currently believe he acted alone.

      Discord, the online platform, told reporters that: “We have identified an account that appears to be linked to the suspect; it was rarely utilized and we have found no evidence that it was used to plan this incident or discuss his political views,” the company said in a statement, according to Reuters.

      The suspect also had no documentary history of mental health issues, the FBI said, according to the Washington Post.

      The Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center has said in statements to media outlets that the suspect was a dietary aide at the facility. “We are shocked and saddened to learn of his involvement as Thomas Matthew Crooks performed his job without concern and his background check was clean,” the administrator told CNN.

      A high school classmate of Crooks described him as “quiet,” “nice,” and good at math, the Washington Post reported. She said that while he did sometimes wear hunting or camouflage outfits to school, that was typical for the area, and that he was not one of the kids at the school who were perceived as violent.
      The Guardian’s Ramon Antonio Vargas has previously reported that the suspect lived in “Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, a predominantly white, generally affluent suburb of Pittsburgh. Public records show he shared a home with parents who were licensed behavioral care counselors. Those same records contain no mention of any criminal or traffic citations – as well as any financial problems such as foreclosures.”Two classmates of shooting suspect tell ABC News he was rejected from rifle clubABC News is reporting that two former school classmates say the suspected shooter in the Trump campaign attack, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was rejected from his high school’s rifle club for not being a very good shot.Two students told ABC News that Crooks was a “bad shot”, with one adding that he wasn’t the right “fit”.“On the first day of preseason, he basically couldn’t even hit the target,” classmate Jameson Myers told ABC News.It’s worth noting that these comments were not immediately confirmed by the school rifle team’s coach, who declined to comment, and a spokesman for the school district did not immediately respond to a request for comment, ABC News reported.Pennsylvania state police release names of two men injured in Trump rally shootingThe names of two injured men who were shot in the Trump campaign rally attack were made public by state police. They are:

      57-year-old David Dutch, of New Kensington, Pennsylvania, who is currently listed in stable condition.

      74-year-old James Copenhaver, of Moon Township, Pennsylvania. He is also listed in stable condition.
      Officials previously released the name of Corey Comperatore, 50, of Sarver, Pennsylvania, who was shot and killed in the attack. The Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, called Comperatore a “hero” and said he was a former fire chief who “dove on his family to protect them last night at this rally” and was killed while protecting them.Associated Press: Local officer encountered gunman just before he shot towards Trump at rallyThis is Lois Beckett, picking up our live news coverage. Amid intense questions over security outside the rally, the Associated Press is reporting that two law enforcement sources say that a local police officer encountered the suspected shooter before he opened fire:
      Not long before shots rang out, rallygoers noticed a man climbing to the roof of a nearby building and warned local police, according to two law enforcement officials.
      One local police officer climbed to the roof and encountered Thomas Matthew Crooks, who pointed his rifle at the officer. The officer retreated down the ladder, and Crooks quickly took a shot toward Trump, and that’s when Secret Service snipers shot him, said the officials, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
      The Washington Post, citing an interview with the Butler county sheriff, Michael T Slupe, reports: “Just before the gunman opened fire, he faced a municipal police officer who wasn’t able to neutralize him.”Here’s a look at where things stand:

      Donald Trump will continue with his schedule and fly to Milwaukee, Wisconsin today, at 3.30pm ahead of the Republican national convention. In a post on Truth Social on Sunday afternoon, Trump wrote: “Based on yesterday’s terrible events, I was going to delay my trip to Wisconsin, and The Republican National Convention, by two days, but have just decided that I cannot allow a ‘shooter,’ or potential assassin, to force change to scheduling, or anything else.”

      Joe Biden said that he had spoken with Donald Trump following the assassination attempt on the ex-president. “We had a short but good conversation. Jill and I are keeping him and his family in our prayers. We also extend our deepest condolences to the family of the victim who was killed. He was a father, he was protecting his family from the bullets that were being fired,” Biden added.

      “There is no place in America for this kind of violence, or any violence,” said Biden. The president is to address the nation tonight at 8pm from the Oval Office, the White House confirmed.

      Joe Biden is rescheduling his trip to Texas following the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, according to White House pool reports. The trip was originally planned for Monday 15 July. Biden was expected to deliver a keynote address at the Lyndon B Johnson library in Austin to mark the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.

      Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro, said that the victim – Corey Comperatore, a 50-year old former fire chief – who was killed in yesterday’s Donald Trump rally shooting “died a hero”. “We lost a fellow Pennsylvanian last night. Corey Comperatore,” said Shapiro, adding: “Corey was a girl dad. Corey was a firefighter. Corey went to church every Sunday. Corey loved his community. And most especially, Corey loved his family.”

      Bomb-making materials were discovered in the home of the suspect involved in yesterday’s shooting, according to law enforcement officials speaking anonymously to the Associated Press. Bomb-making materials were also reportedly found in the suspect’s car near the rally site.

      Mark Green, the Republican chairman of the House committee on homeland security, has issued a letter to the Department of Homeland Security, demanding the secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, turn over the security plans of yesterday’s event site. In the letter, Green wrote: “The seriousness of this security failure and chilling moment in our nation’s history cannot be understated.”

      Melania Trump has issued a statement calling for political unity after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump yesterday in Butler, Pennsylvania. In her statement released on Sunday, she wrote: “America, the fabric of our gentle nation is tattered, but our courage and common sense must ascend and bring us back together as one.” She went on to call the suspect a “monster” who saw her husband as an “inhuman political machine”.

      Authorities handling security at the rally at the Butler Park Showgrounds in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, have dismissed claims that Donald Trump was denied a request for additional security. The US Secret Service has called the claim “absolutely false”.

      The US House speaker, Mike Johnson, has said “we shouldn’t be targeting people” as he urged Americans to treat one another with dignity and respect in the aftermath of the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump. He said there has been no figure in modern American history – besides perhaps Abraham Lincoln – who has been so “vilified” by the media and the legal system as he says Trump has.
      Donald Trump will continue with his schedule and fly to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, today at 3.30pm ahead of the Republican national convention.In a post on Truth Social on Sunday afternoon, Trump wrote:
      Based on yesterday’s terrible events, I was going to delay my trip to Wisconsin, and The Republican National Convention, by two days, but have just decided that I cannot allow a ‘shooter,’ or potential assassin, to force change to scheduling, or anything else. Therefore, I will be leaving for Milwaukee, as scheduled, at 3:30 P.M. TODAY. Thank you!
      As the US comes to grips with Donald Trump’s assassination attempt, Jonathan Freedland and Sidney Blumenthal discuss what this tragedy means for the former president’s image with less than five months until the election:Joe Biden will address the nation from the Oval Office at 8pm tonight, the White House confirms.Biden’s remarks will follow the assassination attempt on Donald Trump yesterday during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.In a brief address on Sunday afternoon from the Roosevelt Room, Biden condemned the attack, saying, “There is no place in America for this kind of violence.”“Mr Trump, as a former president and nominee of the Republican party, already received a heightened level of security and I’ve been consistent in my direction of the Secret Service to provide him with every resource, capability and protective measure necessary to ensure his continued safety,” Joe Biden said.“Second, I’ve directed the head of the Secret Service to review all security measures for … the Republican national convention, which is scheduled to start tomorrow.“And third, I’ve directed an independent review of national security at yesterday’s rally to assess exactly what happened, and we’ll share the results of that independent review with the American people as well,” Biden said.“We don’t yet have any information about the motive of the shooter. We know who he is. I urge everyone, everyone, please don’t make assumptions about his motives or his affiliations,” said Joe Biden.“Let the FBI do their job, and their partner agencies do their job. I’ve instructed that this investigation be thorough and swift, and the investigators will have every resource they need to get this done,” he added.“There is no place in America for this kind of violence, or any violence,” said Joe Biden.“For that matter, an assassination attempt is contrary to everything we stand for as a nation, everything. It’s not who we are as a nation. It’s not America, and we cannot allow this to happen. Unity is the most elusive goal of all, but nothing is more important than that,” he added.Joe Biden said that he had spoken with Donald Trump following the assassination attempt on the ex-president.“We had a short but good conversation. Jill and I are keeping him and his family in our prayers. We also extend our deepest condolences to the family of the victim who was killed. He was a father, he was protecting his family from the bullets that were being fired,” Biden added. More

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      Experts dismiss Kristi Noem’s ‘dubious’ claim to have met Kim Jong-un

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      The South Dakota governor, Republican vice-presidential hopeful and self-confessed dog-killer Kristi Noem’s bizarre claim in a new book to have met the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un has been dismissed by experts as “dubious” and not “conceivable”.The Dakota Scout first reported Noem’s claim, which is in her forthcoming book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward.The book will be published next week. Last week, the Guardian obtained a copy and reported how Noem describes killing Cricket – a 14-month-old dog she said she “hated” – after deeming her uncontrollable and a danger to people, and a goat she said was “nasty and mean”, smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid”, and bothered her children.Noem has repeatedly defended the story as illustrative of the harsh realities of farm life. But it set off a political firestorm, by most assessments dynamiting the governor’s chance of being named running mate to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president.The Scout reported that Noem’s book also contains “at least two instances in which she recounts meetings with world leaders that are in dispute”.In one, Noem writes: “Through my tenure on the House armed services committee, I had the chance to travel to many countries to meet with world leaders.“I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. I’m sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants (I’d been a children’s pastor, after all).”But the Scout quoted one “longtime, high-level Capitol Hill staffer” who worked on the armed services committee when Noem was on it, between 2013 and 2015, as saying: “It’s bullshit.”“That staffer was among a dozen staffers … who said they had no knowledge of the meeting, or who said Noem had never mentioned it before,” the paper said.It quoted experts saying Noem’s claim to have met with Kim, the autocratic leader of a pariah state who did not even meet with Barack Obama – the US president for the first five years of Noem’s time in the US House – was unlikely.“I don’t see any conceivable way that a single junior member of Congress without explicit escort from the US state department and military would be meeting with a leader from North Korea,” George Lopez of Notre Dame University, an expert on North Korea, told the Scout.“What would have been so critical in his bag of tricks that he would have met with an American lawmaker, this one distinctively?”Another North Korea expert, Benjamin Young of Virginia Commonwealth University, called Noem’s account of meeting Kim “dubious”.“There’s no way,” Young told the Scout. “There’s no way.”Noem also claims to have canceled a meeting with Emmanuel Macron, the president of France. She writes of being in Paris, “slated to meet” the French president.“However, the day before we were to meet he made what I considered a very pro-Hamas and anti-Israel comment to the press. So, I decided to cancel. There is no place for pro-Hamas rhetoric.”Macron’s office told the Scout no direct invitation to Noem was issued, though it did say Noem and Macron might have been scheduled to attend the same event last 10 November.Noem spoke at a conference in Paris that day, the same day Macron called for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.Noem’s spokesperson did not comment to the Scout before it published its story.After the story went live, the paper said, it was told: “The publisher will be addressing conflated world leaders’ names in the book before it is released.”Trump did meet Kim: in Singapore in 2018, in Hanoi in 2019, and in the Demilitarised Zone between North and South Korea later the same year. No lasting diplomatic progress was made.
      This article was amended on 3 May 2024 to correct the title of the newspaper cited. It is the Dakota Scout, not the South Dakota Scout as first reported. More

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      New Cold Wars review: China, Russia and Biden’s daunting task

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      Russia bombards Ukraine. Israel and Hamas are locked in a danse macabre. The threat of outright war between Jerusalem and Tehran grows daily. Beijing and Washington snarl. In a moment like this, David Sanger’s latest book, subtitled China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion, and America’s Struggle to Defend the West, is a must-read. Painstakingly researched, New Cold Wars brims with on-record interviews and observations by thinly veiled sources.Officials closest to the president talk with an eye on posterity. The words of the CIA director, Bill Burns, repeatedly appear on the page. Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, and Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, surface throughout the book. Sanger, White House and national security correspondent for the New York Times, fuses access, authority and curiosity to deliver an alarming message: US dominance is no longer axiomatic.In the third decade of the 21st century, China and Russia defy Washington, endeavoring to shatter the status quo while reaching for past glories. Vladimir Putin sees himself as the second coming of Peter the Great, “a dictator … consumed by restoring the old Russian empire and addressing old grievances”, in Sanger’s words.The possibility of nuclear war is no longer purely theoretical. “In 2021 Biden, [Gen Mark] Milley, and the new White House national security team discovered that America’s nuclear holiday was over,” Sanger writes. “They were plunging into a new era that was far more complicated than the cold war had ever been.”As Russia’s war on Ukraine faltered, Putin and the Kremlin raised the specter of nuclear deployment against Kyiv.“The threat that Russia might use a nuclear weapon against its non-nuclear-armed foe surfaced and resurfaced every few months,” Sanger recalls.The world was no longer “flat”. Rather, “the other side began to look more like a security threat and less like a lucrative market”. Unfettered free trade and interdependence had yielded prosperity and growth for some but birthed anger and displacement among many. Nafta – the North American Free Trade Agreement – became a figurative four-letter word. In the US, counties that lost jobs to China and Mexico went for Trump in 2016.Biden and the Democrats realized China never was and never would be America’s friend. “‘I think it’s fair to say that just about every assumption across different administrations was wrong,” one of Biden’s “closest advisers” tells Sanger.“‘The internet would bring political liberty. Trade would liberalize the regime’ while creating high-skill jobs for Americans. The list went on. A lot of it was just wishful thinking.”Sanger also captures the despondency that surrounded the botched US withdrawal from Afghanistan. A suicide bombing at the Kabul airport left 13 US soldiers and 170 civilians dead. The event still haunts.“The president came into the room shortly thereafter, and at that point Gen [Kenneth] McKenzie informed him of the attack and also the fact that there had been at least several American military casualties, fatalities in the attack,” Burns recalls. “I remember the president just paused for at least 30 seconds or so and put his head down because he was absorbing the sadness of the moment and the sense of loss as well.”Almost three years later, Biden’s political standing has not recovered. “The bitter American experience in Afghanistan and Iraq seemed to underscore the dangers of imperial overreach,” Sanger writes. With Iran on the front burner and the Middle East mired in turmoil, what comes next is unclear.A coda: a recent supplemental review conducted by the Pentagon determined that a sole Isis member carried out the Kabul bombing. The review also found that the attack was tactically unpreventable.Sanger also summarizes a tense exchange between Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, over the Gaza war.“Hadn’t the US firebombed Tokyo during world war two? Netanyahu demanded. “Hadn’t it unleashed two atom bombs? What about the thousands who died in Mosul, as the US sought to wipe out Isis?”On Thursday, the US vetoed a resolution to confer full UN membership on the “State of Palestine”. Hours later, Standard & Poor’s downgraded Israel’s credit rating and Israel retaliated against Iran.New Cold Wars does contain lighter notes. For example, Sanger catches Donald Trump whining to Randall Stephenson, then CEO of AT&T, about his (self-inflicted) problems with women. The 45th president invited Stephenson to the Oval Office, to discuss China and telecommunications. Things did not quite work out that way.“Trump burned up the first 45 minutes of the meeting by riffing on how men got into trouble,” Sanger writes. “It was all about women. Then he went into a long diatribe about Stormy Daniels.”Stephenson later recalled: “It was ‘all part of the same stand-up comedy act’ … and ‘we were left with 15 minutes to talk about Chinese infrastructure’.”Trump wasn’t interested. Stephenson “could see that the president’s mind was elsewhere. ‘This is really boring,’ Trump finally said.”On Thursday, in Trump’s hush-money case in New York, the parties picked a jury. Daniels is slated to be a prosecution witness.Sanger ends his book on a note of nostalgia – and trepidation.“For all the present risks, it is worth remembering that one of the most remarkable and little-discussed accomplishments of the old cold war was that the great powers never escalated their differences into a direct conflict. That is an eight-decade-long streak we cannot afford to break.”
      New Cold Wars is published in the US by Penguin Random House More

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      Chinese students in US tell of ‘chilling’ interrogations and deportations

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      Stopped at the border, interrogated on national security grounds, laptops and mobile phones checked, held for several hours, plans for future research shattered.Many western scholars are nervous about travelling to China in the current political climate. But lately it is Chinese researchers working at US universities who are increasingly reporting interrogations – and in several cases deportations – at US airports, despite holding valid work or study visas for scientific research.Earlier this month the Chinese embassy in Washington said more than 70 students “with legal and valid materials” had been deported from the US since July 2021, with more than 10 cases since November 2023. The embassy said it had complained to the US authorities about each case.The exact number of incidents is difficult to verify, as the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency does not provide detailed statistics about refusals at airports. A spokesperson said that “all international travellers attempting to enter the United States, including all US citizens, are subject to examination”.But testimonies have circulated on Chinese social media, and academics are becoming increasingly outspoken about what they say is the unfair treatment of their colleagues and students.“The impact is huge,” says Qin Yan, a professor of pathology at Yale School of Medicine in Connecticut, who says that he is aware of more than a dozen Chinese students from Yale and other universities who have been rejected by the US in recent months, despite holding valid visas. Experiments have stalled, and there is a “chilling effect” for the next generation of Chinese scientists.The number of people affected is a tiny fraction of the total number of Chinese students in the US. The State Department issued nearly 300,000 visas to Chinese students in the year to September 2023. But the personal accounts speak to a broader concern that people-to-people exchanges between the world’s two biggest economies and scientific leaders are straining.The refusals appear to be linked to a 2020 US rule that barred Chinese postgraduate students with links to China’s “military-civil fusion strategy”, which aims to leverage civilian infrastructure to support military development. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute thinktank estimates that 95 civilian universities in China have links to the defence sector.Nearly 2,000 visas applications were rejected on that basis in 2021. But now people who pass the security checks necessary to be granted a visa by the State Department are being turned away at the border by CBP, a different branch of government.“It is very hard for a CBP officer to really evaluate the risk of espionage,” said Dan Berger, an immigration lawyer in Massachusetts, who represents a graduate student at Yale who, midway through her PhD, was sent back from Washington’s Dulles airport in December, and banned from re-entering the US for five years.“It is sudden,” Berger said. “She has an apartment in the US. Thankfully, she doesn’t have a cat. But there are experiments that were in progress.”Academics say that scrutiny has widened to different fields – particularly medical sciences – with the reasons for the refusals not made clear.X Edward Guo, a professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University, said that part of the problem is that, unlike in the US, military research does sometimes take place on university campuses. “It’s not black and white … there are medical universities that also do military. But 99% of those professors are doing biomedical research and have nothing to do with the military.”But “if you want to come to the US to study AI, forget it,” Guo said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOne scientist who studies the use of artificial intelligence to model the impact of vaccines said he was rejected at Boston Logan International airport. He was arriving to take up a place at Harvard Medical School as a postdoctoral researcher. “I never thought I would be humiliated like this,” he wrote on the Xiaohongshu app, where he recounted being quizzed about his masters’ studies in China and asked if he could guarantee that his teachers in China had not passed on any of his research to the military.He did not respond to an interview request from the Observer. Harvard Medical School declined to confirm or comment on the specifics of individual cases, but said that “decisions regarding entry into the United States are under the purview of the federal government and outside of the school’s and the university’s jurisdiction.”The increased scrutiny comes as Beijing and Washington are struggling to come to an agreement about the US-China Science and Technology Agreement, a landmark treaty signed in 1979 that governs scientific cooperation between the two countries. Normally renewed every five years, since August it has been sputtering through six-month extensions.But following years of scrutiny from the Department of Justice investigation into funding links to China, and a rise in anti-Asian sentiment during the pandemic, ethnically Chinese scientists say the atmosphere is becoming increasingly hostile.“Before 2016, I felt like I’m just an American,” said Guo, who became a naturalised US citizen in the late 1990s. “This is really the first time I’ve thought, OK, you’re an American but you’re not exactly an American.”Additional research by Chi Hui Lin More

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      ‘My jaw dropped’: Annie Jacobsen on her scenario for nuclear war

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      Annie Jacobsen was a high school student in 1983, when ABC television broadcast the film The Day After, about the horrors of nuclear war. She never forgot the experience. More than 100 million Americans watched and were terrified too. One of them lived in the White House. According to his biographer and his own memoirs, it helped turn Ronald Reagan into a nuclear disarmer in his second term.Not long after, the world’s stockpile of nuclear warheads peaked and began to decline rapidly, from 70,000 to just over 12,000 currently, according to the Federation of American Scientists.That is still enough however to reduce the Earth to a radioactive desert, with some warheads left over to make it glow. Meanwhile, the global situation is arguably the most dangerous since the Cuban missile crisis, the Russian invasion of Ukraine grinding on mercilessly and China contemplating following Moscow’s example by making a grab for Taiwan.The danger of nuclear war is as immediate as ever but it has faded from public discourse, which is why Jacobsen, now a journalist and author, felt driven to write her new book, Nuclear War: A Scenario.“For decades, people were under the assumption that the nuclear threat ended when the Berlin Wall went down,” Jacobsen said, before suggesting another reason the existential threat of nuclear weapons has been filtered out of mainstream discourse – it has been turned into a technical debate.“​​Nuclear weapons and the whole nomenclature around them have been so rarefied it’s been reserved as a subject for those in the know,” she said.In her book, Jacobsen seeks to break through jargon and details in order to tell a terrifying story in a devastatingly straightforward way. The spoiler alert is that it doesn’t end well.As the book promises on the cover, it presents a single scenario for a nuclear war, set in the present day. North Korea, perhaps convinced it is about to be attacked, launches a surprise missile strike against the US, leading Washington to respond with a salvo of 50 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). These are aimed at North Korea’s weapons sites and command centres, but in order to reach their intended targets the missiles have to fly over Russia, because they do not have the range to use any other route.All too aware of the danger of miscalculation, the US president tries to get hold of his Russian counterpart. But the two men and the countries they run are not getting on, and he fails. Making things even worse, Russia’s dodgy satellite early warning system, Tundra, has exaggerated the scale of the US salvo, and from his Siberian bunker, the Russian president (Vladimir Putin in all but name) orders an all-out nuclear attack on the US.The scenario is based on known facts concerning the world’s nuclear arsenals, systems and doctrine. Those facts are all in the public domain, but Jacobsen believes society has tuned them out, despite (or perhaps because of) how shocking they are.Jacobsen was stunned to find out that an ICBM strike against North Korea would have to go over Russia, and that Russia’s early warning system is beset with glitches, an especially worrying fact when combined with the knowledge that both the US and Russia have part of their nuclear arsenals ready to launch at a few minutes’ notice. Both also have an option in their nuclear doctrine to “launch on warning”, without waiting for the first incoming warhead to land.View image in fullscreenA US president would have a few minutes to make a decision if American early warning systems signaled an incoming attack. In those few minutes, he or she would have to process an urgent, complex and inevitably incomplete stream of information and advice from top defence officials. Jacobsen points out that in such circumstances the president is likely to be subject to “jamming”, a chorus of military voices urging he or she follows protocols which lead inexorably towards a retaliatory launch.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“My jaw dropped at so much of what I learned, which was not classified but had just been removed or rather sanitised from the public discourse,” she said. “I found myself constantly surprised by the insanity of what I learned, coupled with the fact that it’s all there for the public to know.”Ultimately, only presidents can make the decision and once it is made, no one has the authority to block it. It is called sole authority, and it is almost certainly the most frightening fact in the world today. It means a handful of men each have the power to end the world in a few minutes, without having to consult anyone.It is not a group anyone would choose to have that responsibility, including as it does the likes of Putin and Kim Jong-un. In Washington it is a choice this year between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. They all bring a lot of human frailty, anger, fear and paranoia to a potential decision that could end the planet.“You would want to have a commander-in-chief who is of sound mind, who is fully in control of his mental capacity, who is not volatile, who is not subject to anger,” Jacobsen said, referring to this year’s presidential election.“These are significant character qualities that should be thought about when people vote for president, for the simple reason that the president has sole authority to launch nuclear weapons.”
      Nuclear War: A Scenario is published in the US by Dutton More

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      Putin ‘gains every day’ Congress fails to send Ukraine aid, top Biden official says

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      Vladimir Putin “gains every day” the US House does not pass a new aid package for Ukraine, Joe Biden’s national security adviser warned, as its president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, warned of dire outcomes unless Ukraine receives US military aid within one month.Ahead of a crunch week in Washington that could end in a government shutdown – in part made possible by hardline Republican opposition to new support for Kyiv – Jake Sullivan told CNN that “the reality is that Putin gains every day that Ukraine does not get the resources it needs and Ukraine suffers.”Sullivan pointed to “a strong bipartisan majority in the House standing ready to pass” an aid package for Ukraine “if it comes to the floor”.The Democratic-held Senate already passed a $95bn package of aid to Ukraine and other US allies, including Israel, earlier this month. But in the House, the Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, is under pressure from the pro-Trump far right of his party not to bring it to a vote.In striking contrast to the division within the US Congress, European leaders were set to meet in Paris on Monday to discuss Ukraine, seeking to show unity and support. “We are at a critical moment,” Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, said. “Russia cannot win in Ukraine.”Speaking on the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Zelenskiy on Sunday said “millions will be killed without US aid” and told a conference in Kyiv that a US failure to pass new aid would “leave me wondering what world we are living in”.The US has so far sent billions of dollars of aid and weapons, but with the pro-Russian Trump all but confirmed as the Republican nominee for president, large elements of the congressional GOP have fallen in behind him to block new Ukraine spending.Ukrainian forces report shortages of weapons and ammunition, as a grinding stalemate gives way to Russian gains. On Sunday, Zelenskiy put the overall death toll among Ukrainian troops at 31,000.US officials were previously reported to have put it at 70,000.Congress has been on holiday for two weeks and reconvenes on Wednesday. In order to approve Ukraine aid, rightwing House Republicans are also demanding spending on border and immigration reform – regardless of the fact that Senate Republicans this month sank a bipartisan border deal of their own which included it.“History is watching whether Speaker Johnson will put [the Senate foreign aid] bill on the floor,” Sullivan said. “If he does, it will pass, will get Ukraine what it needs for Ukraine to succeed. If he doesn’t, then we will not be able to give Ukraine the tools required for it to stand up to Russia and Putin will be the major beneficiary of that.”Many Republicans in the House do support Ukraine aid. A senior Republican member of the foreign relations committee called on Johnson to put the aid package on the floor for a vote or risk a party rebellion.“Ukrainians have already died because we didn’t provide this aid eight months ago as we should have,” Brad Sherman of California told CNN. “I think that it’s up to Speaker Johnson to put this bill on the floor. It’ll pass it’ll pass by a strong vote. And he needs to do that so the aid flows in March.“If he doesn’t, eventually Republicans will get tired of that obstructionism and will join Democrats in a discharge petition” – a congressional manoeuvre, rarely used, that can bypass blockages.“But that’s a very bulky way to try to pass a bill. It’s only happened once in my 28 years in Congress. I suspect that we’ll be getting the aid to Ukraine in April, unless Speaker Johnson is willing to relent.”Ukraine, Sherman said, was a “bulwark between Russia and Nato countries that we are obligated to defend, notwithstanding what Trump may have said”.Trump has repeatedly threatened to refuse to defend Nato countries he deems not to have paid enough to maintain the alliance, going so far as to say he would encourage Russia to attack such targets.The defence of Ukraine, Sherman said, “is just critical to us. They can’t do it. They haven’t been able to do it this last month, because we have not provided the artillery shells and other systems.” More

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      Cameron warns failure to supply arms to Ukraine will harm US security

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      David Cameron has said that the continued US failure to supply arms to Ukraine would undermine its own security, strengthen China and cast doubt on America’s reliability as an ally around the world.The UK foreign secretary, who attended the G20 meeting in Brazil earlier in the week, admitted that the effort to rally global support for the Ukrainian cause had been “damaged” by the fact that neither the US nor the UK had voted for a UN resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. But he argued the damage had been mitigated by the UK’s clarification of its position.Cameron was speaking in New York on the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine at a time when the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, is blocking a substantial package of military aid to Kyiv, leading to a severe ammunition shortage for Ukrainian troops.The foreign secretary was flanked by his German and Polish counterparts, Annalena Baerbock and Radek Sikorski, who made their own calls for US supplies to be resumed at a meeting organised in New York by the Wall Street Journal ahead of a UN security council meeting on Ukraine on Friday afternoon.Earlier in the day, Joe Biden had announced 500 new sanctions on Russia and a further 100 entities around the world for providing support to Russia, in an effort to squeeze Moscow’s revenues. But the foreign ministers made clear that arms supplies were the key in the struggle with Russia in Ukraine.Cameron sought to frame his argument in terms of competition with China, one of the few issues that unites Republicans and Democrats in the US Congress.“I know that lots of people in Congress are hugely concerned about the role of China and if you’re concerned about the role of China, you must make sure that Putin doesn’t win,” he said.He added that Beijing was enjoying “the fact that we’re, we’re not as united as we should be. I think that’s why the American package is so important.”In its relations with countries around the world, Cameron argued, China was saying “come have a relationship with us. America isn’t reliable.”The end of US military support to Ukraine, he added “would strengthen that argument they make in an enormous way”.Baerbock said the blockage of US aid “will be the biggest gift for Putin and will be the biggest gift for China”.“The Ukrainians are fighting like lions, but you cannot fight with bare hands,” Sikorski said. “They are running out of ammunition for anti-aircraft missiles that are protecting cities and when soldiers don’t have artillery shells, they have to do close combat fighting. That means that Ukrainian casualties are greater.”The European ministers face an uphill task persuading a Republican congressional leadership that is under the powerful sway of Donald Trump, an opponent of Ukrainian aid, and also resistant to allied pressure. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Republican congresswoman, responded to an earlier effort by Cameron to persuade Congress in Ukraine’s favour that the foreign secretary could “kiss my ass”.“I’m not trying to lecture or tell American congressmen what to do,” Cameron insisted on Friday. “I love my own country but I love America too. I think this is really important for America, for American security.”He admitted that the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and western positions on the conflict had complicated efforts to build global solidarity against Russia. Earlier this week, the US vetoed a UN security council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire for the third time, and the UK abstained.“The fact that we haven’t signed up for some of these resolutions and what have you, it does do some damage. There is no doubt about that,” Cameron said. “But I think when you explain how we really want to stop the fighting right now and have got a plan to do it, I think that helps to build some faith between the Arab world and what foreign ministers like myself and others say.”As European ministers sought to change minds in the Republican party, Volodymyr Zelenskiy held talks with a US congressional delegation in Lviv. The group – led by the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer – said it wanted to show that the US had not abandoned “the Ukrainian people”, or its Nato allies in Europe.Schumer said he and his fellow Democrats would “not stop fighting” until $61bn in military funding for Ukraine was delivered. House Republicans are currently blocking the assistance package, despite a 64-19 Senate vote in favour.View image in fullscreen“We believe we are at an inflection point in history and we must make it clear to our friends and allies around the globe that the US does not back away from our responsibilities,” Schumer said. The consequences of walking away would be “severe”, he warned, saying he would “make this clear” to the Republican speaker and to others obstructing aid back in Washington.Schumer told the Associated Press opposition to the national security package “may be the view of Donald Trump and some of the hard-right zealots. But it is not the view of the American people, and I don’t think it’s the view of the majority of people in the House or Senate.”Ukrainian commanders say with no new US weapons deliveries they are facing serious problems on the battlefield. They say that Ukrainian soldiers were forced to withdraw from the eastern city of Avdiivka last week because of an acute shortage of shells and ammunition. Further Russian gains were likely if no more aid arrived, they admitted.Ukraine is also running out of western-supplied interceptor missiles. A Russian drone strike killed three people early on Friday in the Black Sea port of Odesa, the regional governor, Oleh Kiper, said. Ukrainian air defences were only able to shoot down 23 out of 31 drones – a significantly lower number than in attacks last year.Earlier in Lviv Zelenskiy met with Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen. The country has been one of Ukraine’s staunchest European allies. Frederiksen recently pledged to give all of Denmark’s artillery reserves to Ukraine and on Friday signed a long-term security agreement with Kyiv. It envisages giving €1.8bn ($1.9bn) in support.The two leaders visited Lviv’s Lychakiv cemetery and laid flowers at the grave of a Ukrainian soldier. Many hundreds of service personnel have been buried there since Russia’s full-scale invasion two years ago. More

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      Biden ‘privately defiant’ over chaotic 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, book says

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      Joe Biden is “privately defiant” that he made the right calls on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in summer 2021, a new book reportedly says, even as the chaos and carnage that unfolded continues to be investigated in Congress.“No one offered to resign” over the withdrawal, writes Alexander Ward, a Politico reporter, “in large part because the president didn’t believe anyone had made a mistake. Ending the war was always going to be messy.”Ward’s book, The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore Foreign Policy After Trump, will be published next week. Axios reported extracts on Friday.Ward adds: “Biden told his top aides, [national security adviser Jake] Sullivan included, that he stood by them and they had done their best during a tough situation.”Ward quotes an unnamed White House official as saying: “There wasn’t even a real possibility of a shake-up.”The US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, a month after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. The Taliban, which had sheltered the leader of al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden, was soon ousted but fighting never ceased.Figures for the total US death toll in the country since 2001 vary. The United States Institute of Peace, an independent body established by Congress, says that 2,324 US military personnel, 3,917 US contractors and 1,144 allied troops were killed during the conflict. More than 20,000 Americans were wounded.“For Afghans,” the institute goes on, “the statistics are nearly unimaginable: 70,000 Afghan military and police deaths, 46,319 Afghan civilians (although that is likely a significant underestimation) and some 53,000 opposition fighters killed. Almost 67,000 other people were killed in Pakistan in relation to the Afghan war.”Hundreds of thousands were displaced. Furthermore, according to the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, “four times as many [US] service members have died by suicide than in combat in the post-9/11 wars [including Iraq and other campaigns], signaling a widespread mental health crisis”.Biden entered office determined to withdraw, and in late summer 2021 US forces pulled out, leaving the defense of the country to US-trained Afghan national forces.The Taliban swiftly overran that opposition, and soon scenes of chaos at Kabul airport dominated world news. Tens of thousands of Afghans who sought to leave, fearing Taliban reprisals after a 20-year US occupation, were unable to get out. More than 800 US citizens were left behind, notwithstanding Biden’s promise on 18 August that troops would stay until every US citizen who wanted to leave had done so.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWard, Axios said, quotes a senior White House official as saying: “There’s no one here who thinks we can meet that promise.”On 26 August, 13 US service members were killed in a suicide attack. Three days later, a US drone strike killed 10 Afghan civilians, seven of them children. No Americans faced disciplinary action over the strike, which a US air force inspector general called “an honest mistake”.According to Axios, Ward also details extensive infighting over the withdrawal between the Departments of State and Defense.Biden, Ward says, tended to favour the state department, having been chair of the Senate foreign affairs committee, and to be wary of the Pentagon, having been vice-president to Barack Obama through eight years of inconclusive war. More