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      If Britain must rearm, how to pay for it? Stiffen the sinews; summon up the taxes | Polly Toynbee

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      “A new era is upon us.” Ursula von der Leyen was not holding back. This is a world turned upside down, changed beyond recognition. Leaders across Europe are echoing the alarm sent out by the European Commission president, and rippling across the continent, Canada and elsewhere: that we face a “clear and present danger on a scale that none of us has seen in our adult lifetime”. She has proposed a plan that would offer €800bn (£660bn) for immediate rearming, with a European sky shield to protect Ukraine.The hooligan Russian asset in the White House has changed everything so profoundly that it is hard to keep track. The US, whose coat-tails we clung to, whose culture we revelled in, whose cleverness dazzled and stupidity confounded, is now the enemy. The shock feels viscerally personal because American culture is deep in our veins at all ages, from Sesame Street to Marvel, from Philip Roth to Philip Glass, the Oscars to Silicon Valley, like it or not. In Iraq and Afghanistan, we obediently followed their blunders, and 642 British soldiers died, as Keir Starmer adroitly reminded JD Vance in parliament. Our glamorous friend has turned fiend. How do we cauterise that off us? Or reconfigure the map of the world in terms of friends and foes?Former UK ambassadors to Washington ruminated over this “seismic” shift, which has shaken every norm from their Foreign Office days. “This is not a blip in the relationship, something fundamental is going on,” one old knight warned a Lords select committee, while another cautioned that the US giving up on Europe in favour of Russia was likely a “current reality”. Sir David Manning pinpointed Britain’s specific anguish at this moment, the downside of the so-called special relationship: as Europe galvanises to rearm, unlike our continental neighbours, we depend on the US for our defence.With every new shock wave, Britain feels this trauma in its marrow. Yet there is hesitancy in government about addressing the nation with a call to arms, as French president Emmanuel Macron has done, warning: “the innocence of these 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall is over.”Look at the remarkable response of Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, lifetime financial conservative and fiscal dogmatist, as he grasps the severity of the times: he will reverse all his previous fiscal policies and his nation’s usual dread over borrowing, breaking their “basic law” with a huge €500bn loosening of debt rules to rearm. This amounts to “one of the most historic paradigm shifts in German postwar history”, according to Deutsche Bank. German borrowing costs shot up, but so have predictions of German growth from a sluggish 0.8% to 2%, with investors sending industrial stocks soaring. But note this: in his fiscal sea change, rearming will not be accompanied by any cuts to German social spending.How about Britain? Our government has announced no change to fiscal policy. Living within our self-imposed straitjacket, our rearming will be paid for by cuts to aid, benefits and most departments, as Rachel Reeves this week sends her plans to the Office for Budget Responsibility to prove the books are balanced. Yet the promises the government has made are impossible to keep: no more borrowing, no more tax rises and no return to austerity. These are terrible choices – the aid cut already breaks a manifesto pledge – destroying trust whichever way Labour turns. But which is the least bad?A copy of Duncan Grant’s portrait of John Maynard Keynes hangs by my desk, a reminder to reach for his 1940 prescription How to Pay for the War, a book that spelled out the necessary financial sacrifices of the time. Emergency action needed then was draconian, rapidly increasing production while drastically reducing consumption, introducing rationing and diverting everything to the war effort. In comparison, what’s needed in this new emergency is a pinprick, to raise the 3% of GDP for defence spending that Starmer is aiming for. Take just this one measure: in a disgraceful (and failed) act of crude election bribery, Jeremy Hunt cut 4p off employees’ national insurance. Restoring that would cover the cost of this extra defence spending alone, says Ben Zaranko of the Institute for Fiscal Studies; so would 2p more on income tax for all.Labour’s Treasury team winces at the very thought of any further tax rises, after the walloping Reeves got for the £40bn tax rise in October’s budget. They are jumpy: remember Liz Truss’s mini-budget, maxi-catastrophe, they say. Look how even small tax changes such as the farmers’ inheritance tax can create a storm; some policies make absolute sense in economic and fairness terms, but crash politically. Besides, tax rises that cut people’s spending money risk stunting growth, they say – but then so do cuts to public spending. Borrow more? That adds to the mammoth £100bn a year we spend servicing existing debt, they say. But we are now on the hunt for the least-worst option – and Britain still pays less tax than similar countries.Starmer has risen to the needs of the hour. But he has yet to address his citizens on what rearming means, and what it requires of them. We like to think of ourselves as warlike, and at the ready. We are good at displays of national pride and national parades, with a four-day celebration planned for the 80th anniversary of VE day in May. But tax and financial sacrifice were essential parts of that victory. The alternative – miserable cuts to benefits for the weakest, and stripping yet more from threadbare stricken public services – is the worst of all the bad options. In our finest hour, Britain shed its traditional tax-phobia. If ever there was a moment to stiffen the sinews and summon up the taxes, it is now: for the defence of the realm.

      Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist More

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      Trump exempts many Canadian goods from tariffs after giving same delay to Mexico – US politics live

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      Donald Trump has signed an executive order that will temporarily exempt Canadian goods covered by a continental free trade agreement from his tariff plan.Goods imported to the United States under the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement will be exempted from Trump’s 25% tariffs for one month, according to the order Turmp just signed in the Oval Office, which will also do the same for goods from Mexico.However the president said he was still ready to impose “reciprocal” tariffs on both Canada and Mexico next month, which could further disrupt trade relations across the continent.“During this interim period between now and April 2, this makes it much more favorable for our American car manufacturers,” Trump said.As he signed executive orders in the Oval Office this afternoon, including his on-again, off-again tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Trump was asked by Peter Doocy of Fox News about the sharp decline in the stock market since he started his trade war.Trump said that he blamed “globalists”, a term that is often used as code for Jews by antisemites.“What’s your thought about why the markets are so spooked? Do you think they don’t like the tariffs, or do they not like the uncertainty with some of the changes and the carve-outs?” Doocy asked.“Well a lot of them are globalist countries and companies that won’t be doing as well because we’re taking back things that have been taken from us many years ago”, Trump replied. “We’ve been treated very unfairly as a country. We protect everybody; we do everything for all these countries”, he added, “we just weren’t treated right; we were ripped off.”The term “Globalist” is an entry in the Anti-Defamation League’s glossary of extremism and hate. According to the ADL:
      White supremacists and other antisemites frequently use the term as an antisemitic dog whistle, wielding it as a codeword for Jews or as a pejorative term for people whose interests in international commerce or finance ostensibly make them disloyal to the country in which they live, or who are willing to undermine the financial security of their neighbors in order to benefit transnational interests. …
      Antigovernment extremists also use the term globalist, usually without the antisemitic connotations, in references to conspiracy theories about the “New World Order.”
      Trump’s claim that the United States is foolish for providing military protection to allies is one of his oldest and most consistent beliefs. In 1987, as he reportedly weighed a run for the presidency, Trump paid to publish an open letter to the American people as a full page ad in the New York Times in which he claim that US military allies and trade rivals were scamming the US and, as a result, “The world is laughing at America’s politicians”.At the end of the press availability, Trump reiterated the comment when he was asked again about the plunging value of stocks that make up a large share of many Americans retirement plans.“I think it’s globalists that see how rich our country is going to be, and they don’t like it”, he said. “They’ve been ripping off this country for years and now– and they’re going to do great, everyone’s going to do great, but we can’t let this continue to happen to America”.US district judge Beryl Howell ruled on Thursday that Donald Trump’s firing of a Democratic member of the National Labor Relations Board was illegal and ordered that she be reinstated to her post.The decision restores a quorum of three members at the labor board, which had been paralyzed and unable to decide cases involving private-sector employers after Trump removed Gwynne Wilcox in January.As our colleague Michael Sainato reports, Wilcox was the first member of the NLRN to be removed by a US president since the board’s inception in 1935.The framers of the US constitution, the judge wrote in the ruling, “made clear that no one in our system of government was meant to be king – the President included – and not just in name only”.Read the full story here:In an escalation of his pressure campaign, Donald Trump said the US will not fight for Nato allies who don’t spend enough on their own defense.“I think it’s common sense,” the president said. “They don’t pay, I’m not going to defend them.”He went on to accuse Nato allies of not being willing to defend the United States, if the roles were reversed:
      If the United States was in trouble, and we called them, we said we got a problem, France, we got a problem, couple of others, I won’t mention –you think they’re going to come and protect us? They’re supposed to, I’m not so sure.
      It’s worth noting that after the September 11 attacks, Nato allies rallied to the US’s defense and participated in the invasion of Afghanistan, remaining in the country for two decades.All that said, Trump reiterated that he did not intend to leave Nato:
      I view Nato as potentially good, but again … it’s very unfair what’s been happening.
      Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he will “probably” extend TikTok’s deadline to find a US buyer or face a ban.On the day he took office, the president gave the popular social media app a 75-day exemption from a law Congress passed that was intended to force its China-based owned to divest. Speaking to reporters, Trump said that if necessary, he was willing to allow TikTok to continue operating while the search for a buyer continues.“We have a lot of interest in TikTok. China is going to play a role, so hopefully China will approve of the deal,” Trump said.He declined to say how long of an extension he would be willing to give.Donald Trump also confirmed that cabinet secretaries and agency heads will take the lead in determining where to make cuts in the federal workforce, with Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” in a supporting role.“I don’t want to see a big cut where a lot of good people are cut. I want the cabinet members to keep the good people and the people that aren’t doing a good job, that are unreliable, don’t show up to work, etc, those people can be cut,” Trump said.“We’re going to be watching them, and Elon and the group are going to be watching them and if they can cut, it’s better,” Trump said. “And if they don’t cut, then Elon will do the cutting.”It was confirmation that Trump was cutting back on the mandate he had given Musk to dramatically downsize the federal government.Donald Trump has signed an executive order that will temporarily exempt Canadian goods covered by a continental free trade agreement from his tariff plan.Goods imported to the United States under the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement will be exempted from Trump’s 25% tariffs for one month, according to the order Turmp just signed in the Oval Office, which will also do the same for goods from Mexico.However the president said he was still ready to impose “reciprocal” tariffs on both Canada and Mexico next month, which could further disrupt trade relations across the continent.“During this interim period between now and April 2, this makes it much more favorable for our American car manufacturers,” Trump said.Most Democrats opposed censuring congressman Al Green, who heckled Donald Trump during his speech to a joint session of Congress and was thrown out of the House chamber for it.But 10 Democrats went along with the Republican-backed resolution, with several explaining that they felt they had no option if they want to hold their opponents to account in the future. Here’s Connecticut’s Jim Himes, encapsulating the sentiment:
      Years ago, I voted to hold Joe Wilson accountable for yelling ‘you lie’ at Barack Obama. Today, I voted to censure Al Green for a larger disruption. Unlike Republicans, I believe that rules, accountability and civility should not be torched. And certainly not just because the other side does so. If we cannot act with the principle and seriousness our nation deserves, our government will continue to devolve into a MAGA cesspool.
      Perennially endangered Washington congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez said it was a matter of respect:
      Today, I voted to censure a fellow member of Congress. When you knowingly break House rules, as Rep. Green did, it shouldn’t be surprising to face consequences. Congress should respect the co-equal office of the Presidency, regardless of who holds the job, do our constitutional duty, and stop with the theatrics at these events.
      Pennsylvania’s Chrissy Houlahan says she thinks many more people in the chamber should be censured, and told House speaker Mike Johnson as much:
      I did indeed have a heated conversation with Speaker Johnson on the House floor after I voted yes to censure my colleague. I called Speaker Johnson out on his and his party’s hypocrisy and reminded him of the many instances in which Republicans have blatantly broken the rules of conduct without consequence. He told me if he punished each instance, he’d have to censure half the House. I suggested he do just that. Rules are rules.
      There appears to be more to Donald Trump’s meeting with cabinet secretaries than he let on. Politico reports that the president told them that they are in charge of hiring and firings at their agencies, not Elon Musk.The president’s message came after signs of tensions between his secretaries and Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) flared. Doge was linked to an email sent to federal workers demanding details of their work that many agencies told their employees not to respond to, while some Republican lawmakers have said it should be up to agency heads to decide who to hire and fire.Here’s more on the meeting, from Politico:
      President Donald Trump convened his Cabinet in person on Thursday to deliver a message: You’re in charge of your departments, not Elon Musk.
      According to two administration officials, Trump told top members of his administration that Musk was empowered to make recommendations to the departments but not to issue unilateral decisions on staffing and policy. Musk was also in the room.
      The meeting followed a series of mass firings and threats to government workers from the billionaire Tesla founder, who helms the Department of Government Efficiency, that created broad uncertainty across the federal government and its workforce.
      …
      The president’s message represents the first significant move to narrow Musk’s mandate. According to Trump’s new guidance, DOGE and its staff should play an advisory role — but Cabinet secretaries should make final decisions on personnel, policy and the pacing of implementation.
      Musk joined the conversation and indicated he was on board with Trump’s directive. According to one person familiar with the meeting, Musk acknowledged that DOGE had made some missteps — a message he shared earlier this week with members of Congress.
      Trump stressed that he wants to keep good people in government and not eject capable federal workers en masse, according to one of the officials. It is unclear whether the new guidance will result in laid off workers getting rehired.
      The timing of the meeting was influenced by recent comments from Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), who said on CNN Tuesday that Cabinet secretaries should retain the full power to hire and fire, according to one official. The official said Trump has been flooded with similar concerns from other lawmakers and Cabinet secretaries.
      Donald Trump restated his support for Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency”, and vowed to continue helping him cut down federal agencies.The president’s comments came as judges nationwide consider challenges to Trump and Musk’s moves, including their attempts to shutter USAid. Yesterday, the supreme court ruled that the Trump administration must abide by a judge’s order for the aid agency to pay $2b to its partners, a sign that the conservative-dominated court may not be entirely onboard with the unorthodox downsizing campaign.“DOGE has been an incredible success, and now that we have my Cabinet in place, I have instructed the Secretaries and Leadership to work with DOGE on Cost Cutting measures and Staffing,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.He continued:
      We just had a meeting with most of the Secretaries, Elon, and others, and it was a very positive one. It’s very important that we cut levels down to where they should be, but it’s also important to keep the best and most productive people. We’re going to have these meetings every two weeks until that aspect of this very necessary job is done. The relationships between everybody in that room are extraordinary. They all want to get to the exact same place, which is, simply, to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
      Doge continues to face substantial, though not necessarily durable, pushback as it spreads its campaign across the federal government:The Republican-majority US House Judiciary Committee has reportedly issued a subpoena to tech company Alphabet Inc, the parent company of Google.Reuters is reporting that the committee is seeking the company’s internal communications as well as those with third parties and government officials during Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration.A day after the supreme court denied a request from the Trump administration to continue freezing nearly $2bn in foreign aid, US foreign aid contractors and grant recipients are set to go before a federal judge today to try to restore the halted funding.The hearing is scheduled to take place in Washington today at 2 pm ET.When Donald Trump took office on 20 January, he ordered a 90-day freeze on all US foreign assistance, while his administration reviewed whether aid was consistent with his “America first” foreign policy, temporarily ending thousands of programs worldwide.Several aid organisations that had received grants or contracts with the US government sued the administration, and a US District judge ordered that the funding be temporarily restored.But, the Trump administration then filed an emergency request with the supreme court and Chief Justice Roberts initially paused the deadline to allow the court more time to review the request and hear from both sides.Until this week, when the supreme court rejected the administration’s bid to continue freezing nearly $2bn in foreign aid, leaving in place the ruling from the district judge, which ordered the administration to unfreeze the nearly $2bn in aid, for work already completed by the organizations and that had been approved by Congress.Tim Walz, Minnesota governor and 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, said in an announcement today that he wants fired federal workers to consider jobs in his state.“In Minnesota, we value the experience and expertise of federal workers, even if Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and DOGE do not,” Walz said in a statement. “Government workers provide services each of us relies on — from park rangers to firefighters to medical personnel who care for our veterans. If the Trump administration turned you away, Minnesota wants you.”Walz said that fired federal workers in his state can visit Minnesota’s careers website for resources to help with their job searches and to apply for unemployment benefits. He also said it will include resources for fired veterans.There are around 18,000 federal employees in Minnesota.Fox News’ senior White House correspondent is reporting that a meeting between Ukraine and the US is scheduled to take place on Tuesday next week.“Rubio, Witkoff, Waltz headed to Riyadh on Tuesday to meet with Ukrainians, including Yermak” Jacqui Heinrich posted on X today.Follow along in our Ukraine live blog here:Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said that “virtually all” of Mexico’s trade with the US is under the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, known as USMCA, which will be exempt from tariffs until 2 April. “Practically all the trade we have with the United States is within the Mexico, United States, Canada Agreement” Sheinbaum said at a news conference on Thursday, as reported by CNN. “There is a part that has to do with rules of origin, but everything is practically within the trade agreement.” More

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      US suspends aid to South Africa after Trump order

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      The state department has ordered an immediate pause on most US foreign assistance to South Africa, according to a cable seen by the Guardian, officially implementing a contentious executive order by Donald Trump.The directive, issued on Thursday, implements Executive Order 14204 targeting what the administration called “egregious actions” by South Africa. It orders all state department entities to immediately suspend aid disbursements, with minimal exceptions.“To effectively implement EO 14204, all bureaus, offices and missions shall pause all obligations and/or dispersion of aid or assistance to South Africa,” reads the cable, signed by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio.The cable follows the 7 February order, amid a broader reassessment of US foreign aid which paused certain foreign assistance pending review.The order specifically cites “unjust racial discrimination” against white Afrikaners – descendants of Dutch colonizers who implemented the segregationist regime that denied basic rights to the Black majority until 1994.The South African-born billionaire Elon Musk, a Trump super-ally who heads the administration’s government efficiency team and has condemned his homeland for “openly racist policies”, is widely seen as influencing the administration’s stance toward a country where white South Africans, just 7% of the population, still disproportionately control most wealth and land.According to the cable, Rubio has delegated authority to Pete Marocco, a Trump loyalist who presided over the administration’s evisceration of foreign aid programs at USAid and the state department, to determine whether specific aid programs should continue. The guidance emphasizes there is “a very high bar for such requests”.Only Pepfar, the US global HIV/Aids program that provides life-saving treatment to millions of South Africans, will proceed without additional review, according to the cable. All other assistance programs require special permission, even those that had received prior exceptions under the January foreign aid pause.This is the latest sign of escalating tensions between the two generally friendly nations, starting when President Trump accused South Africa of using its new land law to discriminate against white citizens – claims the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, rejected as misinformation.The bill in question controversially permits government acquisition of private land without compensation in certain circumstances, though its supporters say such seizures would be rare and subject to judicial review.Trump has also criticized South Africa’s leading role in its genocide case against Israel at the international court of justice, while also offering refugee status to wealthy white Afrikaners who wanted to relocate to the United States, further incensing the country.The aid freeze also follows South Africa’s recent announcement that it is preparing a new trade proposal for the Trump administration, as officials anticipate the possible end of the African Growth and Opportunity Act – which has allowed billions in duty-free exports to the United States.Earlier on Thursday, South Africa issued a statement acknowledging the US withdrawal from the Just Energy Transition Partnership (Jetp), which has canceled previously funded climate projects following Trump’s revocation of international climate finance initiatives.The state department did not respond to a request for comment. More

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      ‘Little agency that could’ cheered for act of resistance against Trump and Musk

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      Members of Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) unit were barred from entering a small, independent federal agency promoting economic development in Africa on Wednesday after a tense standoff with federal staff they had been sent to fire.Workers at the US African Development Foundation (USADF), which Donald Trump has ordered to be closed, refused to allow Doge operatives to enter after they arrived at its Washington headquarters on Wednesday afternoon. But the Doge team returned on Thursday, accompanied by agents with the US Marshals Service, and Peter Marocco, the acting director of the now-shuttered US Agency for International Development, according to a government official familiar with the situation. This time, they were able to gain access to the building, the official said, and no staff were present.Scores of legal challenges have been lodged against the sweeping project to upend the government bureaucracy, producing a spate of court rulings declaring the halting of aid illegal and ordering the reinstatement of fired federal workers.In Wednesday’s episode, workers instructed a security guard at USADF’s headquarters to deny the Doge team access when they arrived with Marocco. Trump is trying to install him in a similar role at USADF.Staff cited a letter sent by the agency’s chair, Ward Brehm, who was not present at the time, to a Doge subordinate the previous day making clear that his team would not be allowed to access the agency’s offices in his absence.“In my absence, I have specifically instructed the staff of USADF to adhere to our rules and procedure of not allowing any meetings of this type without my presence,” he wrote, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by the Guardian.Brehm also declined to cooperate with Marocco unless he was officially appointed to the agency’s board.“I will look forward to working with Mr Marocco after such time that he is nominated for a seat on the board and his nomination is confirmed by the Senate,” Brehm wrote.“Until these legal requirements are met, Mr Marocco does not hold any position or office with USADF, and he may not speak or act on the foundation’s behalf.”About 30 workers were in the building when Marocco arrived with a Doge team – described as young men wearing backpacks – intent on carrying out firings based on an executive order issued by Trump on 19 February, the Washington Post reported.The standoff, led by one of the smallest government agencies, with only about 50 employees, has been cheered by government officials as a mighty act of resistance against Trump and Musk’s war on the federal bureaucracy.“This is the little agency that could,” the official said.Trump’s order declared USADF and three other agencies – the Presidio Trust, the Inter-American Foundation (IAF) and the United States Institute of Peace – as “unnecessary” and subject to elimination.Wednesday’s standoff followed a similar exchange at the IAF’s headquarters earlier this week.The workers’ defiant stand comes after Democrats publicly condemned the attempted dismantling of the agency as illegal.“Any attempt to unilaterally dismantle the USADF through executive action violates the law and exceeds the constitutional limits of executive authority,” Democratic members of the House of Representatives’ foreign affairs committee wrote in a 24 February letter to Trump.Democrats have argued that Doge lacks the authority to eliminate an independent entity created by Congress, and that attempts to install Marocco as the acting chair of USADF and IAF are unlawful.The official familiar with the situation said that unlike other federal agencies such as USAid, USADF is a “congressionally chartered corporation” operated by a board of directors whose members are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.“It’s expressed in the statute that you can’t dissolve ADF except by an act of Congress,” the official said. “The president [of ADF] doesn’t take orders from anyone except for the board. The president [of ADF] isn’t even authorized to take orders from the president of the United States.”The agency, created by Congress in 1980 to support small businesses and grassroots organisations serving marginalised communities in Africa, has long enjoyed broad bipartisan support. Between 2019 and 2023, it handed out grants worth about $141m to 1,050 community enterprises serving 6.2 million people. More

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      Cheap goods ‘not essence of American dream’, Trump official says amid tariff price fears

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      Buying cheap products is “not the essence of the American dream”, Donald Trump’s top economic official has declared, amid warnings that the US president’s trade wars risk increasing prices.The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, defended the new administration’s aggressive trade strategy on Thursday, two days after it imposed sweeping tariffs on Canada and Mexico and hiked duties on China.Top retail CEOs have cautioned the move would swiftly lead to higher prices for US consumers. Trump, too, has acknowledged there would be “a little disturbance” as a result.During an appearance at the Economic Club of New York on Thursday, Bessent conceded there could be what he referred to as “a one-time price adjustment” as a result of Trump’s tariffs.“Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream,” he said. The American dream was “the concept that any citizen can achieve prosperity, upward mobility, economic security”, he added. “For too long, designers of multilateral trade deals have lost sight of this.”It comes a few days after Bessent said he was “laser-focused” on high prices in the US. At the weekend, he announced the treasury would recruit an “affordability czar” to help address the issue.“I think President Trump said that he’ll own the economy in six or 12 months, but I can tell you that we are working to get these prices down every day,” Bessent told Face the Nation on CBS.The US president has already watered down key parts of this week’s US trade onslaught, suspending tariffs on Mexico and Canada for carmakers on Wednesday, before temporarily halting tariffs on many other goods from the two countries on Thursday.Trump has repeatedly pledged to rapidly bring down prices for consumers, and declared during a joint address to Congress on Tuesday evening that he was “fighting every day” to “make America affordable again”. More

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      What is this era of calamity we’re in? Some say ‘polycrisis’ captures it

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      Two months into 2025, the sense of dread is palpable. In the US, the year began with a terrorist attack; then came the fires that ravaged a city, destroying lives, homes and livelihoods. An extremist billionaire came to power and began proudly dismantling the government with a chainsaw. Once-in-a-century disasters are happening more like once a month, all amid devastating wars and on the heels of a pandemic.The word “unprecedented” has become ironically routine. It feels like we’re stuck in a relentless cycle of calamity, with no time to recover from one before the next begins.How do we make sense of any of this – let alone all of it, all at once?A number of terms have cropped up in the past decade to help us describe our moment. We’re living in the anthropocene – the era in which humanity’s impact is comparable to that of geology itself. Or we’re in the “post-truth” era, in which we no longer share the same sense of reality. We’re facing a permacrisis, an endless state of catastrophe.But perhaps the word that best describes this moment is one that emerged at the turn of the millennium, picked up steam in the 2010s and has recently been making the global rounds again: polycrisis.Not to be confused with a “perfect storm” or the perhaps less scientific “clusterfuck”, “polycrisis” – a term coined by the authors Edgar Morin and Anne Brigitte Kern – refers to the idea that not only are we facing one disaster after another, but those messes are all linked, making things even worse. Or, as Adam Tooze, a Columbia University history professor and public intellectual who has championed the term, put it: “In the polycrisis the shocks are disparate, but they interact so that the whole is even more overwhelming than the sum of the parts.”Our globalized world is built on interconnecting systems, and when one gets rattled, the others do too – a heating climate, for instance, increases the risk of pandemics, pandemics undermine economies, shaky economies fuel political upheaval. “There’s a kind of larger instability, or a larger system disequilibrium,” the researcher Thomas Homer-Dixon says. To illustrate the situation, Homer-Dixon uses a video of metronomes on a soft surface. Though they’re all started at different times, they end up synchronized, as each device’s beat subtly affects the rest. When people see it for the first time, “they don’t actually see what’s happening properly. They don’t realize the forces that are operating to cause the metronomes to actually synchronize with each other,” Homer-Dixon says.In much the same way, it’s often unclear even to experts how global systems interact because they are siloed in their disciplines. That limits our ability to confront intersecting problems: the climate crisis forces migration; xenophobia fuels the rise of the far right in receiving countries; far-right governments undermine environmental protections; natural disasters are more destructive. Yet migration experts may not be experts on the climate crisis, and climate experts may have limited knowledge of geopolitics.That’s why Homer-Dixon thinks better communication is essential – not just to create consensus around what we call our current predicament but also how to address it. He runs the Cascade Institute, which is fostering “a community of scholars and experts and scientists and policy makers around the world who are using this concept [of polycrisis] in constructive ways”.“Constructive” is a key word here. “You’ve got to get the diagnosis right before you can go to the prescription,” he says. Finding that diagnosis means looking at how stresses on various systems – climate, geopolitics, transportation, information, etc – intersect and identifying what his team calls “high leverage intervention points”: “places where you can go in and have a really big impact for a relatively low investment”.The Cascade Institute’s proposals target what they have identified as key drivers of the polycrisis, such as polarization and climate change, by, for instance, improving school curricula to bolster students’ understanding of disinformation and expanding the use of deep geothermal power.In addition to bringing people with disparate expertise together, the Cascade Institute, part of Royal Roads University in British Columbia, has developed an analytical framework for understanding the polycrisis, and it operates a website, polycrisis.org, which serves as a hub for the latest thinking on the issue – including critiques of the concept, Homer-Dixon says. The site contains a compendium of resources from academia to blogposts that explore the polycrisis, reflecting, for instance, on what’s already happened in 2025 (a tenuous ceasefire in Gaza, California wildfires, Trump upending the global order, an AI-bubble selloff, and the outbreak of bird flu).View image in fullscreenThere has been some backlash to the idea of the polycrisis. The historian Niall Ferguson has described it as “just history happening”. The political scientist Daniel Drezner says its proponents “assume the existence of powerful negative feedback effects that may not actually exist” – in other words, when crises overlap, the outcome might not always be bad (for instance, the pandemic lockdowns might have had some short-lived environmental benefits). Some point to past crises as evidence that what we are experiencing is not new.Homer-Dixon disagrees. “We’ve moved so far and so fast outside our species’ previous experience that many elites don’t have the cognitive frame to grasp our situation, even were they inclined to do so,” he wrote in 2023, when the term was the talk of Davos.It’s all a bit overwhelming, as Homer-Dixon acknowledges. “If you’re not really scared by what’s going on in the world, you’re braindead,” he says.On the other hand, “t​​he crisis can actually be a moment for really significant change,” he says, “because it kind of delegitimizes the existing way of doing stuff, the existing vested-interest stakeholders who are who are hunkered down and don’t want anything to change”. For instance, while Homer-Dixon sees Donald Trump as an “abominable” figure, he also notes that, “like an acid”, the president dissolves norms around him. That creates the risk of disaster but also offers opportunities to change the world for the better.“This really is a critical moment in human history and things can be done,” Homer-Dixon says. “We don’t know enough about how these systems are operating to know that it’s game over.”And the term itself, as terrifying as it is, can also be a strange comfort. “I think that’s useful, giving the sense a name. It’s therapeutic,” Tooze told Radio Davos. When the world feels like a nightmare, identifying the condition gives us something to hold on to – a kind of understanding amid the chaos. More

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      Europe can’t just hope for the best with Trump. Ukraine needs all the arms we can send | Frans Timmermans

      by

      After US vice-president JD Vance’s speech in Munich last month, most European leaders came to the conclusion that our world has fundamentally changed. The Pax Americana that long ensured peace, security and freedom in Europe is over. Anyone who still doubted this will hopefully now realise, after the disgraceful treatment Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy endured last Friday at the White House, that we can no longer rely on the Americans for our collective security.We must hope for the best, but hope is not a policy. We – the Netherlands, the EU, and all western countries standing with Ukraine – must prepare for the worst. The question is this: how do we keep Ukraine free and independent, and how do we protect our economy, our freedom and democracy, and our borders?This begins with the awareness that our security is already directly threatened by Russia. Trump wants to do business over our heads with this country. It appears that he and Vladimir Putin have divided Europe into spheres of influence like two mob bosses in a low-budget movie. As the saying goes: if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.The Netherlands is not an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean; we are fully exposed when geopolitical and economic storms brew on our continent. It is the Russian aggression in Ukraine that has made our energy prices rocket. We cannot batten down the hatches and wait for the storm to pass. We are a medium-sized country with significant European and international interests. It is high time we acted accordingly.But political divisions at the heart of our government are leaving us exposed. The biggest party in the coalition governing the Netherlands, the Party for Freedom (PVV), led by Geert Wilders, has a history of pro-Kremlin rhetoric. While other parties, such as the centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), formerly led by Mark Rutte, are staunch advocates of unwavering support of Ukraine. Combined with an unelected prime minister, Dick Schoof, who serves no specific political party, the coalition government is rudderless and unstable.It is abundantly clear that our national scale is far too small to make a real difference. Today, we need the EU more than ever before. We must also work on closer ties with countries that share our sense of urgency and are not EU members, primarily the UK and Norway, but also Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The EU will also need to take a much firmer stance against member states such as Hungary that spare no effort in promoting Putin’s (and Trump’s) agenda.View image in fullscreenThe most urgent priority now is to support Ukraine. We must fill the gaps that Trump is leaving behind. Financially, this should not be too complicated, but in military terms, this is a different challenge. Russia will now intensify its attacks, so all available military equipment must be sent to Ukraine as quickly as possible. With additional financial support, we can also get the Ukrainian defence industry up and running at full capacity.The Russians are struggling more than it appears at first glance; sanctions are damaging the country, the losses are significant, and the war economy is creating large gaps elsewhere. Sanctions need to be scaled up much further, and all frozen Russian assets in the EU must be transferred to Ukraine immediately.EU member states must wake up and stop squabbling over trivial matters. The same goes for the Schoof cabinet. It is all hands on deck now. This means thinking creatively about European war bonds and finding the fastest possible way to bolster our defence in preparation for a confrontation in which the Americans may leave us to fend for ourselves. This requires investing in areas that the Americans currently cover within Nato. Moreover, it is vital for the overall resilience of Dutch society that defence investments do not come at the expense of our social safety net.In the longer term, we must first establish a partnership that provides the collective security guarantee of Nato without having to rely on the US. Crucial to this is the involvement of Britain and possibly Canada, and European countries that are not members of the EU. Therefore, it should go beyond the EU and perhaps also exclude countries, if these, such as Hungary or the nominally neutral Austria and Ireland, for example, do not want to participate.Second, it is of national security interest to make progress on a genuine energy union. High energy prices constitute the primary economic threat to this continent. This requires much more collective investment in energy networks, renewable energy, and also joint procurement of gas for as long as we need it.The Netherlands can play a leading role in all these areas, but it is not doing so. Because the coalition is deeply divided, the prime minister speaks too hesitantly, too late, and too ambiguously. Because the coalition is not allocating additional funds for Ukraine and is implementing utterly nonsensical cuts to the contributions to the EU, the words of support are literally and figuratively cheap. Because the largest coalition party is at best ambiguous and usually sides with Trump – who is now also siding with Putin – our government is adrift.Fortunately, there is still hope. The rudderless government may be on the brink of despair, but the people are not without hope, and our country is certainly not without prospects. The Dutch people see that the world order is changing. In such extraordinary, dangerous times, they deserve a decisive, united government.

      Frans Timmermans is the leader of the leftwing alliance of the Dutch Green party and the Labour party (GroenLinks/PvdA)

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