The letter, which was signed by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, asks the White House to pursue the Minsk agreements which would "demilitarize the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine and guarantee meaningful political autonomy to the region while retaining Ukrainian sovereignty over the area and its borders." QI fellow Anatol Lieven has detailed the agreement and the promise it would hold for peace in the region here.
De-escalation is key, wrote the signing organizations, which also emphasized the need to stop NATO expansion and resist calls to send U.S. troops to defend Ukraine.
We echo the call by over 100 former U.S. officials and leading scholars who stated that, in addition to addressing urgent security challenges, we must engage in a serious and sustained strategic dialogue with Russia “that addresses the deeper sources of mistrust and hostility” while deterring Russian military aggression. These dialogues must engage with President Putin’s explicit pursuit of “reliable and long-term security guarantees” that would “exclude any further NATO moves eastward and the deployment of weapons systems that threaten us in close vicinity to Russian territory.
Interestingly, reports emerged Friday that suggested that the White House was willing to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Eastern Europe and scale back military exercises in the region — for an equivalent reduction of Russian troops in the area. In an accompanying statement, the White House disputed that Washington was weighing troop cuts.
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos is the Editorial Director of Responsible Statecraft.
Yavoriv, Ukraine – U.S. Army soldiers assigned to the Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine observe a Ukrainian Army live-fire exercise at the Yavoriv Combat Training Center Dec. 7, 2017. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Alexander Rector)|Yavoriv, Ukraine – U.S. Army soldiers assigned to the Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine observe a Ukrainian Army live-fire exercise at the Yavoriv Combat Training Center Dec. 7, 2017. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Alexander Rector)
Top image credit: U.S. President Donald Trump meets with China's President Xi Jinping at the start of their bilateral meeting at the G20 leaders summit in Osaka, Japan, June 29, 2019. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Trump is considering a significant reduction of the extraordinarily high tariffs on China that followed a dizzying tit-for-tat spiral between the two countries in early April.
China was the only country to immediately retaliate against Trump’s draconian “liberation day” tariffs, and Trump’s intolerance for that self-assertion led to 145% tariffs on the U.S. side and 125% tariffs on the Chinese side — tantamount to severing economic relations overnight between the world’s two most important economic powers.
Trump’s public softening is a hopeful sign because the tariff confrontation could all too easily tip over into an irreparable break between the United States and China, ultimately developing into large-scale violence. Yet significant obstacles stand in the way, and both sides have already taken damaging steps that undermine the possibility for de-escalation. Regardless of what happens with the tariff rate, if the Trump administration successfully pushes major third countries to exclude China from their economies, conflict is likely to spin out of control.
Commentators have been slow to focus on the danger of U.S.–China conflict. Many have grown complacent as the conflict became familiar and seemingly contained to small-scale antagonistic measures and empty diplomatic discussions. Trump’s conflicts with allies, his tariff campaign against the whole world, and his attacks on liberal institutions at home have drawn all the attention.
Yet we now stand in a moment of acute danger. Against a years-long background of growing economic, military, and philosophical tensions, the trade war threatens to unleash a series of escalatory dynamics across all realms in the U.S.–China relationship.
Already under the first Trump and Biden administrations, the gradual formation of adversarial geopolitical blocs was underway. Biden’s consolidation and systematization of Trump 1’s exclusionary policies toward China had convinced the Chinese leadership of immovable American hostility to China’s interests. Then, Trump stacked his administration with a fractious national security and international economic team whose only point of agreement was the need for confrontation with China.
Trump himself, however, offered hope of escaping a devastating international conflict. His enthusiasm for dealmaking, his admiration of Xi Jinping, and his hostility to the dogmas of American primacy that animated the Biden administration all created an opening to move the relationship off its trajectory toward permanent hostility. Beijing recognized the possibilities and from the moment of Trump’s election victory began informally floating ideas on what China could offer to Trump’s priorities, seeking a reliable connection in Trump’s notoriously fluid inner circle, and inquiring into how a negotiation process could be structured.
The biggest obstacle was not Trump’s team, which he has cowed into obedience, but his desire to cow China, too.
Rather than responding to Beijing’s outreach, Trump hit China with an initial 10%t tariff increase in early February, claiming it was punishment for China’s indirect involvement in the fentanyl trade. Media coverage focused on even larger punitive tariffs directed at Canada and México, but these were quickly withdrawn while those on China remained. Trump repeated the same routine in early March, again sparing Canada and México while raising tariffs on China another 10%.
China responded with considerable restraint to both rounds, still seeking to preserve space for negotiation. Already under Biden, China had begun cooperation on limiting fentanyl inputs, so Chinese leaders were skeptical that this was the real issue. With increasing urgency, Beijing sought to determine what Trump actually wanted. But no response was forthcoming.
Then came the “liberation day” tariffs, with a 34% increase applied to China, and Beijing fundamentally changed its approach. China’s leaders seem to have concluded that Trump simply wants to demonstrate his own power by debasing China, as he has done to countries ranging from Canada to Colombia to Ukraine. This is clear in China’s repeated condition for talks: they “must proceed in a manner of sovereign equality on a foundation of mutual respect.”
The Chinese Communist Party’s entire foreign policy legitimacy and ideology are built on the claim that it remade China so that it could finally stand up against the depredations of foreign powers. Chinese diplomats’ emphasis on respectful treatment, often expressed through a preoccupation with diplomatic protocol and a sharp antipathy toward U.S. attempts to discredit China, grows from this foundation.
Even as he mulls the possibility of reducing the crippling tariff rates he imposed, Trump continues to say that China will have to be the one to request it. “China wants to make a deal. They just don’t know how quite to go about it,” Trump said shortly after tossing away the chance for talks and breaking the economic relationship. “You know, it’s one of those things they don’t know quite — they’re proud people.”
Over the last two weeks, he and close advisers like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have repeatedly expressed such sentiments. In response, China has shown openness to talks but insists it will not negotiate at the point of a gun. China is also looking for a clear process in the talks and some sense of an agenda from the United States. Most recently, China’s Commerce Ministry suggested that Trump could resolve the impasse by removing all “unilateral tariff measures.”
As the two trade accusations in public, in the background both are moving in the most dangerous direction possible: to force the rest of the world to choose one or the other. In its talks with other countries that were targeted on “liberation day,” the Trump administration is demanding that they sever economic ties with China. China responded by arguing that other countries would be short-sighted to make deals with a bully and promising “equivalent countermeasures” against any country that sacrifices Chinese interests as the price for access to the United States.
We are now stuck in the absurd spectacle of the world’s two most powerful leaders acting like children who want to make up but who insist that the other take the first step. The longer this impasse lasts, the less likely we will avoid cascading escalation into conflict.
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Top photo credit: King Abdullah of Jordan in Amman. (Ahmad A Atwah/Shutterstock)
On Wednesday, the Jordanian government declared that it had banned the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement that has long been active in the kingdom.
The announcement followed arrests last week of 16 members of the group for allegedly plotting an attack inside Jordan. The interior minister stated that the group and all its affiliated activities were illegal.
It was not immediately clear what impact the ban would have on the Islamic Action Front, the political party affiliated with the Brotherhood, which won a plurality of votes in last fall’s parliamentary election. The party tried to distance itself from the Brotherhood during a press conference on Wednesday, saying it would continue to operate as an independent political party with no affiliation and “within the limits of the law.”
Following the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s subsequent campaign to bomb and blockade Gaza, the Islamic Action Front became significantly more vocal in its longstanding criticism of Israel, as well as of the 1994 Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty. The party’s critique reflected widespread rage among Jordanians, approximately half of whom are originally from historic Palestine, provoked by Israel’s brutal military campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 50,000 people, mostly women and children.
That anger has been expressed in frequent public demonstrations as well as a widespread boycott of American and European products, due to these countries’ support for Israel’s actions.
The IAF translated public dissatisfaction with the Jordanian government’s perceived complicity in Israel’s war into electoral success in last September’s parliamentary elections. In a statement to the Jordan News in response to the banning of the Brotherhood, Zaki Bani Irshaid, the former secretary general of the Islamic Action Front, criticized the government’s decision for stoking internal division at a time when Jordan faced an existential threat from Israel’s creeping annexation of the West Bank. If Israel tried to force the three million Palestinians who live in the West Bank across the border into Jordan, the continued rule of King Abdullah and the Hashemite monarchy would likely be seriously threatened.
Anger at the king’s perceived willingness to effectively acquiesce to Israel’s destruction of Gaza raises questions as to why he outlawed the Brotherhood now, which risks provoking greater unrest. The announcement was made while a Saudi delegation, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was visiting Amman, prompting speculation that Abdullah may have wished to demonstrate his anti-Islamist bona fides.
The Saudi government has waged a years-long campaign against the Saudi Muslim Brotherhood as it attempts to transform its approach to Islam under the auspices of MbS’s Vision 2030. Jordan has long relied on Saudi Arabia, as well as the United States, for financial support. Last year, Riyadh completed a $250 million aid package for Jordan. With U.S. President Donald Trump having suspended the $1.45 billion the U.S. annually sends to Jordan, Abdullah is likely eager to secure other sources of funding.
Yet this is not the first time that Abdullah has targeted the group. In a 2013 interview, he described the Brotherhood as “run by wolves in sheep’s clothing.” In 2015, the government helped to orchestrate a split between the group’s so-called “hawks” and “doves,” allowing the latter to retain control of all of the Brotherhood’s assets. In 2016, the government closed the offices of the so-called “hawks,” after preventing them from holding elections for the group’s internal leadership. All of these reflect Abdullah’s general suspicion of the Brotherhood and its popularity.
Yet historically, the Jordanian branch of Brotherhood was known as the “loyal opposition.” In contrast to the repression suffered by the original Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and some of its branches elsewhere around the region, the Jordanian monarchy has tolerated the group, which in turn avoided openly challenging the king’s rule. The group itself is as old as Jordan itself — both of them were established in 1946.
During the reign of King Hussein (1952-1999), the group was permitted to operate, including by running schools and charities and other social services. His son Abdullah took the throne not long before the 9/11 attacks transformed the U.S. approach to the Middle East. Abdullah was eager to partner with Washington, including by hosting CIA “black sites” for the detention, interrogation, and torture of suspected Al Qaeda militants and assisting in the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
As counter-terrorism dominated the U.S. security agenda, Abdullah sought to portray himself as a “moderate Muslim partner” against violent extremism. Under the rubric of “moderate Islam” versus “extremist Islam,” Abdullah, like many regional leaders, falsely portrayed Islamist movements, despite their explicit rejection of violence, as supportive of terrorism, if not the actual perpetrators, and thus essentially equivalent. Under this framework, Abdullah could more easily depict the Brotherhood as suspect.
His latest move to repress the group likely reflects his concern that opposition to his ongoing partnership with Israel is growing. Across much of the Middle East, Arab publics continue to watch in horror as Israel violated its ceasefire with Hamas and then returned to pounding Gaza with renewed ferocity while simultaneously preventing all aid, food, or medicine from entering the territory since March 2. In the intervening 53 days, the risk of acute malnutrition has grown, with the UN World Food Program warning that hundreds of thousands of people are at risk.
Abdullah’s crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood will likely do little to quell his population’s growing frustration as more children succumb to starvation in Gaza.
The Bunker appears originally at the Project on Government Oversight and is republished here with permission.
Arming the heavens
The U.S. Space Force has issued a blueprint(PDF) detailing just what “space warfighting” will mean for the U.S. military battling for the ultimate high ground far above our heads. The 22-page “landmark document underscores the critical importance” for “space superiority,” the command said April 17. More importantly, five years after the creation of the Space Force (during President Trump’s first term), its top brass no longer dance around the touchy issue of waging war on high. Instead of gauzy words like “protecting” and “defending” space, they’re making clear they’re getting ready to attack and destroy up there.
“We have a new administration that has us very focused on this,” Space Force’s Lieutenant General Shawn Bratton said. “We’ve got a secretary of defense who’s very interested in warfighting ethos and lethality, and we naturally progress to the point where we’re moving past ‘protect and defend’ and yeah, we’re going to talk about offensive capabilities in space.” (Back in the 1980s, The Bunker recalls the U.S. military sprinkling the radar-eluding “stealth” label like procurement pixie dust on its new wonder weapons. It has been replaced in the Trump administration by “lethal,” which dates back to when a caveman first clubbed his neighbor.)
Space war could be a spending supernova for defense contractors. This new “framework for planners” calls for developing offensive “orbital strike” weapons to obliterate enemy satellites, “space link interdiction” to degrade their communications, and “terrestrial strike” to destroy an enemy’s ground-based control centers and launch sites. Defensive desires include “escort” missions, “suppression of adversary counterspace targeting,” and “counterattack” (The Bunker has never had the smarts to separate offensive “attack” missions from defensive “counterattack” missions, which is why he doesn’t own a nice boat in Annapolis).
It’s important for a fledgling war-fighting command to cram as many buzzwords as possible into press releases explaining why its latest notion is key to the future of the U.S. That will help with already underway intramural Pentagon turfs wars, and sure-to-follow Capitol Hill funding fights. The Space Force pushed all those buttons in summing up its new owner’s manual for space: “Space Warfighting marks a significant step forward in solidifying the Space Force as a warfighting service and integral part of the Joint and Combined Force, highlighting the essential role of space superiority for national security.”
Sounds like the best thing since sliced dread.
Pentagon seeks nuclear microreactors for US bases
Speaking of buzzwords, the Air Force has gotten a lot of PR mileage — if not smart and efficient weapons — by replacing its long-standing quest for “air superiority” (PDF) with one seeking “air dominance.” So why shouldn’t Pentagon technocrats concerned with powering military bases insist on “energy dominance,” too?
On April 10, the Pentagon declared eight companies eligible to demonstrate their “nuclear microreactors” for possible use on stateside bases. (The term “microreactor” is undefined, and the solicitation is no longer publicly available.) “Projecting power abroad demands ensuring power at home and this program aims to deliver that, ensuring that our defense leaders can remain focused on lethality [there’s that word again!],” Andrew Higier of the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit said. “Microreactors on installations are a critical first step in delivering energy dominance to the force.” This is a pretty dubious notion. If the electrical grid powering the nation, and the U.S. military bases inside it, goes offline, independently electrified military bases won’t help much. Critics say the scheme is too costly and dangerous.
Just like fighting wars in space, harnessing nuclear power on the ground for military bases is part of a peculiar U.S. military obsession that confuses risk with reality. The recent disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq highlight an inability to win despite the world’s most sophisticated military technology. We would do well to recall the Battle of Lexington and Concord, 250 years ago this past weekend. That’s where the highly regarded British Redcoats were vanquished by a ragtag colonial militia. Today’s U.S. armed forces could learn something from their forebears.
A foe the US military can beat
The Pentagon, which tried and failed for 20 years to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan, was able to kill all of its diversity, equity, and inclusion jobs less than 100 days into President Trump’s second term. Of course, most of that work had already been done by Congress, which restricted Defense Department DEI efforts in its 2024 defense authorization bill.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth created(PDF) a task force in January that he said was vital to creating a “lethal” military focused on “lethality” (a two-fer!) by halting efforts to diversify its ranks. It reported March 1 “that the military services, the Joint Staff, and the other DOD components conducted evaluations and certified that there is no use of gender, race, or ethnicity-based goals for organizational composition, academic admissions, or career fields,” the Government Accountability Office said in an April 17 letter(PDF) to Congress. “Further, the report identified key actions the military services and DOD components took to ensure that no boards, councils, and working groups promote DEI and other related concepts.”
Given the Trump administration’s anti-DEI fetish — and the time, focus, and words they have dedicated to wiping it out — you’re forgiven if you think Pentagon hallways are now strewn with victims of this purge.
But under that 2024 law, the GAO reported(PDF) that only 32 DEI positions were eliminated among the Pentagon’s 950,000 civilian workers. The Defense Department has restricted 115 other jobs “to reduce or eliminate the positions’ DEI duties,” it added, also under that legislation. And the Pentagon, it noted, “did not widely use contractors to develop and implement DEI activities.”
So how many additional DEI slots did Trump’s January edict barring them from the Pentagon end up cutting?
Forty-one, including both civilian and military personnel. All those positions, the GAO said, have since been “abolished or restructured” to avoid DEI cooties.
The current zany state of the U.S. government should drive its allies to create a weapons-production conglomerate capable of developing and producing modern arms without the U.S., veteran Brit-born aerospace journalist Bill Sweetman wrote April 15 in The Strategist.
The April 16 explosion that destroyed a Northrop solid-rocket motor building in Utah won’t affect the over-budget and delayed Sentinel ICBM the company is building for the Pentagon’s nuclear triad, John Tirpak of Air & Space Forces Magazine reported April 17.
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