Biden's Middle East trip: Following in Trump's footsteps
WATCH: Biden looks poised to betray his campaign promise to sideline Saudi Arabia. Does this really serve America's interests?
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Responsible Statecraft
Responsible Statecraft is a publication of analysis, opinion, and news that seeks to promote a positive vision of U.S. foreign policy based on humility, diplomatic engagement, and military restraint. RS also critiques the ideas — and the ideologies and interests behind them — that have mired the United States in counterproductive and endless wars and made the world less secure.
Top image credit: President Donald Trump addresses the nation, Wednesday, December 17, 2025, from the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)
Trump national security logic: rare earths and fossil fuels
December 22, 2025
The new National Security Strategy of the United States seeks “strategic stability” with Russia. It declares that China is merely a competitor, that the Middle East is not central to American security, that Latin America is “our hemisphere,” and that Europe faces “civilizational erasure.”
India, the world's largest country by population, barely rates a mention — one might say, as Neville Chamberlain did of Czechoslovakia in 1938, it’s “a faraway country... of which we know nothing.” Well, so much the better for India, which can take care of itself.
The realpolitik of this document is breathtaking, yet the underlying logic is not stated. Indeed, as a statement of political ideology or “values,” the strategy is incoherent. It declares respect for the sovereignty of countries whose governing systems differ from ours, but then berates Europe for antidemocratic practices. It admits the end of U.S. hegemony, but then asserts hegemony over the whole Western hemisphere, citing the Monroe Doctrine as though it were holy writ.
What Ariadne's thread — if there is one — ties all this together?
It is a logic of resources, and in the first instance, of fossil fuels. With oil flowing thick and fast from Texas and reserves in Canada and Venezuela, the U.S. can exit the Persian Gulf. It could even — in principle, let's not predict that it will happen in practice — leave Israel to its own devices. Russian gas, more precisely the lack of it, has sealed the fate of Europe: Germany is deindustrializing while Britain and France, their empires long gone, are in deep decline. Sanctions having failed, Russia's eventual victory in Ukraine is now assured.
Hence it is necessary to accommodate Russia and to break America's longstanding ties to Russophobic European elites.
With China, the resource issue is rare earths and, especially, gallium, a byproduct of refining bauxite into alumina. China controls rare earths through a near-monopoly on refining, which could erode, with determined effort, over time. Gallium is different; U.S. aluminum capacity peaked in 1980, and the Chinese advantage in the underlying refining is now 90 (million metric tons) to 1. The U.S. cannot own-source gallium in adequate quantities on any timescale. As there is no substitute for gallium in advanced microchips, the U.S. military cannot now confront China and prevail. Detente is therefore necessary for America, as it is desired and accepted by China.
The remarkable recent softening of the American line toward China is the direct consequence of this material reality.
As strategy, the new order is not ironclad. So far, it has not much affected Pentagon planning, and should not be taken too seriously until bases are closed, aircraft carriers decommissioned, and nuclear weapons mothballed, while a new Navy based on regional requirements takes shape.
It is also hedged in several unrealistic ways, such as the notion, quickly quashed by China, that perhaps Japan (and Korea) might defend the “first island chain” — that euphemism for Taiwan. Equally unrealistic is the idea that Europe will step up on self-defense, with triple or more the current military spending while their economies continue to decline.
Then there is the undisguised notion that the nations of Latin America are not really countries, but dependencies and satrapies — colonies in all but name — run by caciques. That there have been, and still are, such countries in the region cannot be denied. But Mexico and Brazil, not to mention Colombia and Venezuela, as well as Nicaragua and Cuba, have other ideas. The brazen, Miami-mobster tone of this document is its most retrograde feature, scarcely removed from the years before the American Civil War, when Cuba and Mexico were seen as new frontiers for Southern slaveholders.
As economics, the Strategy is a mass of contradictions. It seeks reindustrialization while simultaneously protecting the financial system and the global dollar. It seeks technological leadership while cutting taxes, regulation, and the government's (long degraded) ability to specify what that leadership entails. It wants to build up an invincible, full-spectrum military while promoting “pro-worker” “prosperity that is widely shared.” This is the syndrome of the child who wants every shiny package under the tree. One may expect a tantrum when reality dawns, that one can't have it all.
Still, for all its defects, as an assault on the previously sacrosanct, unipolar, Eurocentric world order, the new strategy is an ice-breaker. It opens up policy space not seen in 40, 50 or perhaps 60 years — not since Reagan and Gorbachev, Nixon and Mao, or Kennedy and Khrushchev — who each in their own way tried to forestall the final nuclear confrontation. The panicked reaction of the European political leaders and of the U.S. foreign policy and Democratic Party and media elites portends a colossal struggle to keep the old order going. Thomas Friedman's vicious pastiche of cringe and cope is a telling example of what to expect.
Previous efforts at peacemaking all came, eventually, to nought. Kennedy's overtures of 1963, notably the test-ban treaty and his decision to exit Vietnam, ended with his assassination. Nixon's opening to China led to a deep relationship that only lapsed into hostilities as China emerged as a leading economic power while the 1990s-era illusion of an “end to history” and convergence to “liberal democracy” fell apart. The end of the Cold War engineered by Gorbachev and Reagan gave way, under George H. W. Bush, to claims of “victory” with the inevitable repercussion, revanche.
Yet in each of those episodes, the material advantages of the United States were stronger and its need to dominate the world greater than is true today. Since then, U.S. military capacity has eroded; an era of missiles and drones has superseded that of aircraft carriers and bases, and the technological conditions of conflict now overwhelmingly favor the defensive. And for now, the U.S. is indeed self-sufficient in energy, while the reserves it may require at some later date are nearby and not on the other side of the globe.
Those resources that must be obtained from China can be had, so long as China's terms are respected; they will not be had if China sees the United States as a military threat.
The material conditions, in short, favor peace. Neither of the other great powers — let alone the almost-unmentioned India — has delusions of world domination. Taking the world situation as it is, the U.S. can find common ground with Russia and it can live with China as a co-equal and a trading partner. The new strategy is therefore an open invitation for Taipei to settle with Beijing, and for successor governments in Berlin, Paris and London to seek terms from Moscow.
One cannot be optimistic. Adjusting our economy to achieve “pro-worker prosperity” is a task that lies ahead — and it will not be simple or free of internal conflict. No doubt those committed to coercive dominance will make every effort in the months ahead, to reverse any move toward balanced peace. Violence over Venezuela is a looming prospect.
But in the larger sphere, the global warriors are defending a world order that no longer exists, whereas the new conditions really do call for regional consolidation and multi-polarity — for a world where peace and stability are paramount.
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Top image credit: LightField Studios via shutterstock.com
Experts at oil & weapons-funded think tank: 'Go big' in Venezuela
December 22, 2025
As the U.S. threatens to take “oil, land and other assets” from Venezuela, staffers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank funded in part by defense contractors and oil companies, are eager to help make the public case for regime change and investment. “The U.S. should go big” in Venezuela, write CSIS experts Ryan Berg and Kimberly Breier.
Both America’s Quarterly, which published the essay, and the authors’ employer happen to be funded by the likes of Lockheed Martin and ExxonMobil, a fact that is not disclosed in the article.
In the article, titled, “A roadmap for Venezuela’s Future Transition,” Berg and Breier argue that the benefits of regime change in Venezuela outweigh the risks. “[T]he status quo of the repressive, criminal Maduro regime in the heart of the Western Hemisphere is far worse than the risks inherent in the push for change for which the Venezuelan people already voted,” Berg and Breier argue. Venezuela, they say, can be different from Iraq and Libya.
Regime change would no doubt be a boon for defense contractors. “The entire arms industry is set to profit from the buildup and prospect of war,” Stephen Semler, journalist and co-founder of the Security Policy Reform Institute, told RS last month.
General Atomics, which received a $14.1 billion contract in September for procurement and sustainment of its MQ-9 Reaper Systems which have been used in strikes on boats off the coast of Venezuela, gave CSIS over $250,000 in 2024. Lockheed Martin, which produces the F-16 fighter jets that have been deployed to Puerto Rico, gave CSIS over $250,000. Boeing, which manufactures the B-52s flying weekly missions near Venezuela, donated over $100,000 to the think tank this year.
The Council of the Americas, publisher of the Berg and Breier article, is also funded by many companies that stand to gain from these recommendations, including Lockheed Martin, Exxon, Boeing, and ConocoPhillips. The Council of the Americas did not respond to a request for comment.
Berg and Breier also argue that the U.S. ought to open Venezuela up for foreign investment once Maduro is out. A new bilateral investment treaty, they say, “should define the rules of trade and investment and ensure stability and robust protections for investors and their investments” with oil acting as the key economic driver.
Oil companies too, would have a lot to gain from these recommendations. According to Axios, two oil companies have already inquired about the 1.9 million barrels of oil the U.S. recently seized from a Venezuelan tanker. Fernando Ferreira, director of the Geopolitical Risk Service at Rapidan Energy Group, told Politico that while oil companies may be cautious about the political risk, “[t]here’s definitely a latent interest in Venezuela.” After President Biden eased sanctions on Venezuela in 2022, oil companies were quick to demonstrate interest.
Exxon and Conoco Phillips have long claimed they are owed billions of dollars in compensation from Venezuela over seized assets. Exxon donated $250,000 to CSIS this year. ConocoPhillips, which is seeking $8.7 billion from Venezuela over seized assets, gave over $50,000 to the think tank this year. Stephen Miller, a top aide to Trump, wrote on X that the seizure of these assets “was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property.”
CSIS is transparent about its donors, though readers of America’s Quarterly would have to navigate their way to the think tank’s donor page to see these potential conflicts of interests. CSIS’ ethics policy states that the think tank "retains final decisionmaking authority regarding program and project research topics, speakers, and participants in activities and on the contents of reports. Where appropriate, CSIS scholars will consider input from donors regarding these issues.”
In an email to RS, Chief Communications Officer for CSIS Alex Kisling said that the think tank “has not received donor input related to recent U.S. activity around Venezuela, and we are confident our donor transparency practices provide clear disclosure of our funding sources.”
CSIS has also hosted Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado. Last December, Machado spoke at a CSIS event where she promised to “develop the energy sector, oil gas, and renewables to make Venezuela the most attractive energy partner in the Western Hemisphere.” Machado, who says she is ready to take over the Venezuelan government, has sent the Trump administration a blueprint for the first 100 hours and 100 days after regime change.
Berg and Breier’s suggestion to “go big” in Venezuela is not shared by all analysts of a potential conflict. A 2023 RAND study found that U.S. military intervention with Venezuela “would be protracted and not easy for the United States to extricate itself from once it begins its engagement.” Political scientists Alexander Downs and Lindsey O’Rourke warned in a recent Foreign Affairs article about the impending conflict in Venezuela that regime change operations are historically “chaotic and violent.”
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UKRAINE MARCH 22, 2023: Ukrainian military practice assault tactics at the training ground before counteroffensive operation during Russo-Ukrainian War (Shutterstock/Dymtro Larin)
Ukraine's own pragmatism demands 'armed un-alignment'
December 22, 2025
Eleven months after returning to the White House, the Trump administration believes it has finally found a way to resolve the four-year old war in Ukraine. Its formula is seemingly simple: land for security guarantees.
Under the current plan—or what is publicly known about it—Ukraine would cede the 20 percent of Donetsk that it currently controls to Russia in return for a package of security guarantees including an “Article 5-style” commitment from the United States, a European “reassurance force” inside post-war Ukraine, and peacetime Ukrainian military of 800,000 personnel.
Despite optimism from U.S. officials, this proposal is unlikely to be the one that ends the conflict.
There is a better path for Ukraine, one that will leave the country more secure and more confident in that security over the long run, without crossing Russian redlines or requiring expansive commitments from the United States: armed un-alignment. I will explain.
The current proposal on the table crosses clear Russian redlines by planning for European forces inside Ukraine and tying Ukraine into a de facto military alliance with the United States, but those aren’t the biggest obstacles. The more significant problem is that the deal is unpopular among Ukrainians too — not because it offers too little, but (as I heard in Kyiv earlier this month) because it offers so much as to be unbelievable.
U.S. negotiators should embrace Ukraine’s own pragmatism. Rather than basing a deal on security promises it cannot credibly keep, Washington should instead help Kyiv prepare for a future in which it will need to be largely self-sufficient and capable of deterring and defending against potential aggression without direct Western assistance.
Back in August, Vice President J.D. Vance explained the remaining barriers to peace this way: “the Ukrainians want security guarantees. The Russians want a certain amount of territory.” This oversimplifies the complex disagreements between Ukraine and Russia, but the Trump Administration has doubled down on this framework as the best path to a settlement.
The United States continues to encourage Ukraine to relinquish the portion of Donetsk still under its control, arguing that this land is likely to be lost to Russia anyway if the war drags on. On the ground in Kyiv, however, such a concession is a political impossibility.
Even if Ukraine’s negotiating team were to give into U.S. pressure, substantial roadblocks would remain. The country’s parliament would almost certainly reject a unilateral withdrawal from Ukrainian-held Donetsk, and the public would never accept such a compromise in any case. It’s not even clear how such a plan would be implemented, especially if Ukraine’s soldiers refuse to abandon their hard-fought positions along the strategically valuable “fortress belt”.
The White House hopes that the promises of U.S.-backed security guarantees will ultimately persuade Kyiv to accept Russia’s territorial demands. But in Ukraine, haunted by the memory of the Budapest Memorandum, there is deep skepticism about the feasibility and reliability of the promises on offer.
At this point, most in Kyiv have come to the unhappy realization that in the future only Ukraine will fight for Ukraine.
Few in Ukraine have any expectation that the United States would make good on an Article 5-style commitment, even if one were agreed to. After all, successive presidents have made clear that they do not assess fighting for Ukraine to be in U.S. interests. Similarly, talk of a European reassurance force that would be based inside Ukraine after the war is generally dismissed as rhetorical flourish that won’t amount to anything substantive.
The supposed future 800,000-person Ukrainian military provides little comfort to most in Kyiv because it is widely recognized to be unachievable. There is simply no way that Ukraine can recruit, sustain, and finance a peacetime military of that size, given demographic and resource constraints, even assuming that Europe will foot the bill in the short-term.
Something on the order of 300,000 to 400,000 is assessed to the likely upper bound of Ukraine’s post-war military by those with enough information to make a prediction. Kyiv rejects the idea that external caps would be placed on its defense capabilities, but the issue is political rather than one about military capacity.
Through the eyes of Ukrainians, then, the deal on the table offers the worst of all worlds: unacceptable concessions and non-credible promises that sound good but won’t leave Ukraine secure.
As I explain in this new Defense Priorities paper, armed non-alignment (or what some call “armed neutrality”) has long been seen as one of the more feasible options for meeting Ukraine’s security needs, even before the war started in 2022. Critics of this approach dismiss the model as a “neutering” of Ukraine’s military that leaves the country isolated and alone.
But this is inaccurate. As a non-aligned state, Ukraine would be outside of formal military alliances and could not host foreign soldiers, but it would be able to have defense partnerships, including for training with European countries outside of the NATO context. It could be a member of the European Union and have some defense industrial base integration with other member states. It could also purchase many types of weapons from countries like the United States, Germany, or South Korea.
An armed non-aligned Ukraine would also be prepared to defend itself. According to my analysis, with a peacetime military about 250,000 (far below the current accepted cap) and a reserve force of slightly larger size, Ukraine would have enough soldiers to secure and protect its remaining territory.
Ukraine’s own defense industrial base could likely meet most of its military’s needs, including for drones at all ranges; armored vehicles; towed, self-propelled, and rocket artillery systems; and some types of ammunition and long-range missiles. It would need some assistance from the United States and Europe, at least in the near term, to build stockpiles of air defense interceptors, short-range precision munitions, and artillery rockets. It should not need more combat aircraft or tanks than it has today.
Armed with mostly defensive capabilities and legally bound to its non-aligned status, a defense force with these parameters should not excite Russian security concerns. It would not pose an offensive threat to Russia or be able to re-take Russian occupied territory.
Such a force would, however, be sufficient to deny Russia future slices of Ukrainian land and dissuade Russian President Vladimir Putin from incurring the costs of restarting his aggression. Still, this is likely a post-war Ukraine that Russia could accept, as part of an overarching deal that addressed its other political objectives.
Armed non-alignment would be a good post-war outcome for Ukraine but achieving it would likely require an alternate set of peace terms to those currently on the table. For starters, some means of formalizing Ukraine’s non-aligned status would be required. Caps on Ukraine’s military should not be necessary, as structural factors will restrict its size naturally. On the other hand, recognizing this, Ukraine might choose to self-impose limits on the size of its military force in return for compromises from Russia in other areas.
More importantly, under armed non-alignment, Ukraine will need a different kind of security guarantee, one that does not require foreign forces inside Ukraine or tie Ukraine into new military alliances.
One option would be for the United States and Europe to offer peacetime commitments of military and economic assistance for a set period of time or up to a specific dollar amount to help build Ukraine’s military, including especially munitions, air defense, and investments in Ukraine’s defense industrial base. This commitment might be accompanied by a promise of surge military aid if war resumes and the creation of strategic weapons stockpiles outside Ukraine that Kyiv would receive in the event of renewed aggression.
Security guarantees of this type would be narrower than those currently under discussion, but they would be more credible because they match what the United States and Europe have already done for Ukraine over the past four years. If they can be ratified by relevant legislatures and made legally binding, they would also be preferable to many Ukrainians than broader promises that sound good in principle but are empty bluffs in practice.
Finally, questions of territory might be reserved until the end, when most other issues have been addressed. If control over Donetsk is the last sticking point, both sides might be more willing to compromise.
President Trump and his team have been working hard to negotiate peace in Ukraine. But their current approach misunderstands political and military realities inside the country. Adopting armed non-alignment as the model for Ukraine’s post-war security won’t resolve all these challenges, but it would be a crucial first step in the right direction.
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