Geopolitics & international affairs
The House passed its annual defense policy bill Wednesday by a vote of 216 to 212, the closest it has come to failing in recent memory. The National Defense Authorization Act, authorizing an unprecedented $1.15 trillion in military spending, cleared the chamber almost entirely along party lines. Seven Republicans voted no. Six Democrats voted yes. […]
Ukraine has hit Russia’s biggest online retailer again. Overnight strikes on Wildberries logistics hubs in Krasnodar and Nevinnomyssk, in southwestern Russia, injured 15 people and set an oil depot ablaze. Drone debris also hit two apartment buildings. This is the second attack in four days. Over the weekend, strikes on Wildberries warehouses in Tambov and […]
Iran has three choices in the Strait of Hormuz. None of them leads to victory. The BBC laid out the options in an analysis published Wednesday, drawing on interviews with Iranians and experts. The picture is grim for Tehran: every path carries risks that could undo the regime’s strategic position, and the clock is ticking […]
Iran’s foreign minister has given the most detailed account yet of the attack that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and he was in the room when it happened. Abbas Araghchi described to Iranian journalist Javad Mogouyi how he was pulled from the rubble of a leadership compound after the joint US-Israeli air strike that opened […]
The European Union is trying to pass its 21st package of sanctions against Russia. Greece is blocking it. The reason is simple: the package would restrict European imports of Russian liquefied natural gas, and a Greek shipping company called Dynagas controls roughly one-third of the specialized ice-class tankers that haul LNG from Russia’s Arctic Yamal […]
Australia’s foreign minister is about to deliver a message to Beijing that Canberra has been holding back for months: we are building a nuclear-powered submarine fleet and a military capable of defending ourselves, and we will not be intimidated by your provocations. Penny Wong will deliver the speech on Wednesday at the ASEAN summit in […]
The Poles and the Balts have been warning about this for weeks. Now the Polish defense minister has said it publicly: Russia has captured a large number of Ukrainian drones and may be planning to use them against NATO. “I expect a false flag attack on Russian territory, to which Putin ‘will respond,'” Polish Foreign […]
The moral argument against the Iran war has not worked. The three service members who died over the weekend brought the total to 18 dead and more than 440 wounded. The president ordered a 10th night of strikes anyway. So the Democrats are trying a different argument: the price tag. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth […]
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has fired General Oleksandr Syrskyi as commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, the most significant military reshuffle since the early months of the war. The decision, announced Tuesday, follows days of mass protests in Kyiv and other cities demanding Syrskyi’s removal. Demonstrators also called for the reinstatement of former Defense Minister […]
The pattern is so consistent by now it barely qualifies as news: the president fires the people who know the most about a country, then ignores the warnings they would have given him, then the policy fails. Nate Swanson is the latest example. Swanson is a career diplomat who served as Iran director at the […]
