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Category: War

Trump’s actions over the past 72 hours look like an effort to force Kyiv to surrender

Trump’s actions over the past 72 hours look like an effort to force Kyiv to surrender

Anne Applebaum writes: In the past 72 hours, Donald Trump has dropped all pretense, torched a couple decades of American policy, and undermined 18 months of his own diplomacy. He lifted sanctions on the import of Russian diesel fuel, in violation of the letter and spirit of laws that he himself signed. He has threatened to stop sharing intelligence with Ukraine, unless Ukraine agrees not to target Russian refineries, thus demanding that Kyiv give up its most effective weapon while…

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How a series of miscalculations restarted Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen

How a series of miscalculations restarted Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen

CNN reports: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wanted to make his kingdom a magnet for investment, tourism and the world’s biggest sporting events. Now drones and missiles launched from Yemen are slamming into Saudi cities, drawing the kingdom deeper into the regional turmoil he hoped to leave behind. The civil war in Yemen erupted once again this summer and significantly intensified last month, breaking years of relative calm. Saudi Arabia has for 11 years tried to contain the conflict…

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Trump’s diesel deal with Putin won’t help American truckers but it gives a huge boost for Russia

Trump’s diesel deal with Putin won’t help American truckers but it gives a huge boost for Russia

Phillips P. O’Brien writes: With the major story breaking yesterday of the US announcing the purchase of diesel fuel from Russia, followed by a Treasury Department announcement of sanctions relief on Russia (see details below), I am sending out this overview. This development is not only important but it is also indicative of a truth that many (most) people have been unwilling to admit for the last 21 months. The narrow story is the decision by the Trump administration to…

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Trump’s former defense secretary sees no end in sight for Iran war — to the benefit of China

Trump’s former defense secretary sees no end in sight for Iran war — to the benefit of China

CNBC reports: The U.S.-Iran war could drag on for years, putting America at risk of overlooking China’s rise to power, according to President Donald Trump’s former defense secretary. During a panel discussion at LSEG and Eurasia Group’s GZERO Summit in London, Mark Esper said on Thursday he saw the conflict continuing “well into 2027,” with a possibility that it could be handed to the next U.S. administration in three years’ time. “At some point, we will reach a point where…

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Oil prices jump as Iran steps up tanker attacks, hurricane threatens U.S. Gulf production

Oil prices jump as Iran steps up tanker attacks, hurricane threatens U.S. Gulf production

CNBC reports: Crude oil prices rose sharply Thursday, as Iran ramped up its attacks on tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz and Hurricane Isaias threatened U.S. offshore production in the Gulf of Mexico. Brent crude futures, the international benchmark, gained 4% to close at $104.28 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures advanced 3.6% to settle at $91.49 per barrel. Nine tankers have come under attack in and around Hormuz over the past week, jeopardizing the recent recovery in crude…

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‘Neither war nor peace’: Palestinians in Gaza on existing amid disease, despair and ruins

‘Neither war nor peace’: Palestinians in Gaza on existing amid disease, despair and ruins

The Guardian reports: Ahmed Ishtaiwi has six chairs. They are cheap and plastic and battered, but they are among the 43-year-old driver and mechanic’s most valuable possessions. Ishtaiwi lives in a tent near Deir al-Balah in central Gaza with his two daughters. Their former home is far to the north, in the now ruined town of Beit Lahiya, uninhabitable and impossible to reach. “When I sit on those chairs, I remember sitting in the garden at home, having breakfast and…

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Trump’s retreat shows Iran it has the power to chase the U.S. out of the Middle East

Trump’s retreat shows Iran it has the power to chase the U.S. out of the Middle East

The New York Times reports: To hear President Trump and his aides describe it, the rush to withdraw 12 B-1 bombers from an air base in Britain over the weekend was a prudent precaution, in response to a threat they refused to describe. It was no big deal, Mr. Trump insisted, and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, tried to wave it away by noting that the Pentagon is “constantly reallocating resources where ​they need to be.” But to anyone…

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Attacks on tankers in Hormuz hit highest of any week since start of Iran war, sources say

Attacks on tankers in Hormuz hit highest of any week since start of Iran war, sources say

Reuters reports: Attacks on tankers sailing through the Strait of Hormuz hit their highest last week of any week since the ​Iran war began, according to maritime security sources tracking incidents, amid ‌a bigger export push by Gulf producers. Attacks, attempted attacks and harassment activity including drone overflights, surveillance and hailing using VHF radio by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have persisted ​in the strait, the US Navy-led Joint Maritime Information Center (JMIC) said ​in a note on Sunday. “These actions continue…

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Saudi-backed Yemeni government declares war against Houthis, widening crisis

Saudi-backed Yemeni government declares war against Houthis, widening crisis

The New York Times reports: The Saudi-backed government of Yemen on Sunday announced a major military campaign against the Houthi militia, a key Iranian ally, plunging the Middle East even deeper into war. In a televised speech, Rashad al-Alimi, the leader of the internationally recognized, Saudi-backed government, said that the government was seeking to reclaim all the territory it had lost to the Houthis over the past 12 years. The government and the Houthis have been engaged in fierce battles…

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Why ‘NAZA’ terrifies Israel’s liberal elite

Why ‘NAZA’ terrifies Israel’s liberal elite

Sebastian Ben Daniel (John Brown) writes: For decades, the liberal camp in Israel has cultivated a convenient and effective defense mechanism. When faced with uncomfortable moral questions about Israel’s actions, responsibility could usually be assigned to the political fringes. The culprits were always the “bad apples”: hilltop youth, far-right ministers, a rogue infantry unit, settlers nobody in north Tel Aviv would invite to dinner. This division of labor was remarkably convenient. The right committed the crimes; the liberals supplied the…

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How Jared Kushner has profited from the Gaza genocide

How Jared Kushner has profited from the Gaza genocide

CNN reports: At the same time Jared Kushner has acted as a key negotiator in the war in Gaza, his private equity company, Affinity Partners, has held the largest stake in an Israeli firm backing businesses involved in Israel’s military campaigns, a CNN investigation has found. Kushner has skirted deeper scrutiny of this potential conflict of interest by acting as a volunteer envoy, rather than accepting a government job that would require him to disclose his finances. In the process,…

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Hegseth puts the future of warfare in the hands of major MAGA donors

Hegseth puts the future of warfare in the hands of major MAGA donors

The Guardian reports: By installing the tech billionaires Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey to advisory roles in a Pentagon project about the future of warfare, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, bestowed extraordinary influence on two of Maga’s most significant campaign donors – and both men own companies that benefit from federal defense contracting. The new project, which Hegseth dubbed “Project Meridian” in an event in Quantico, Virginia, on Wednesday, will be led by Pentagon official Emil Michael, a former Uber…

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Oil jumps 4% on reports China halts fuel exports, 10,000 more U.S. troops head to Middle East

Oil jumps 4% on reports China halts fuel exports, 10,000 more U.S. troops head to Middle East

Reuters reports: Oil prices ‌jumped on Thursday and settled up more than $4 a barrel, after a report said the US was sending more troops and carriers to the Middle East and China suspended oil products exports, stoking fears that global fuel shortages could worsen. The new front-month December Brent crude futures contract settled at $102.31 a barrel, up 4.37% or $4.28. US West Texas Intermediate crude futures finished at $92.87 a barrel, up 2.71%, or $2.45. A Wall Street…

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Soaring diesel prices are clobbering Trump’s MAGA faithful, exposing rifts

Soaring diesel prices are clobbering Trump’s MAGA faithful, exposing rifts

The Washington Post reports: The administration has long since exhausted the tools available for mitigating the damage to consumers [caused by high fuel prices]. It paused the century-old Jones Act that limits what vessels can ship fuel between U.S. ports. It has spent heavily on a military operation to protect ships seeking to traverse the Strait of Hormuz from attack, which has helped restart the flow of some fuel through the waterway. It has urged Ukraine to stop the attacks…

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U.S. and Russia stripped human oversight from global AI weapons pact

U.S. and Russia stripped human oversight from global AI weapons pact

The Washington Post reports: Early this month, hundreds of diplomats huddled in a cavernous U.N. conference room in Switzerland, working toward a muscular treaty to regulate the use of lethal autonomous weapons — the first agreement governing the use of killer artificial intelligence arms. On the last day of negotiations, the talks turned aggressive. Over the next roughly 15 hours, U.S. and Russian diplomats hammered away at the document, removing a range of provisions designed to safeguard the use of…

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Russia‑Ukraine war is accelerating the dangerous race toward fully autonomous drones

Russia‑Ukraine war is accelerating the dangerous race toward fully autonomous drones

By Amy McAuliffe, University of Notre Dame A battlefield dominated by fully autonomous drones capable of selecting and engaging targets without human intervention sounds like a dystopian sci-fi plot. And while that scenario has not yet arrived, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has moved modern warfare a notch down that road. In recent years, both nations have deployed semi-autonomous drones in combat and are rapidly racing toward fully autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles. Given these developments and the pace of…

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