President Donald Trump ordered U.S. nuclear submarines to be positioned in “the appropriate regions” after former Russian President Dimitri Medvedev reminded Trump of Moscow’s nuclear capabilities ad told him to watch the apocalyptic series “The Walking Dead.”
The war of words started over Trump’s threats to impose sanctions if Russia doesn’t comply with ceasefire in 10 days.
Both Medvedev's remarks and Trump's response are pure theatrics. Having refrained from the use of nuclear weapons over the past three years, Russia is obviously not going to launch them in response to a new round of U.S. sanctions — especially since it has successfully overcome several previous rounds.
Trump is right to ask of his new sanctions, "I don't know if sanctions bother him (Putin)." This almost amounts to admitting that the new sanctions are pointless in terms of putting pressure on Russia and are really intended to defend Trump against domestic criticism.
Trump's announced — or alleged — "deployment" of U.S. nuclear submarines is also completely empty. The U.S. has nuclear submarines capable of striking Russia on permanent deployment.
Medvedev and Trump are both trying to look tough for domestic audiences. The rest of us are not however required to applaud this theatre. At the same time, Trump is right to say that words matter, and there should be no place for empty theatrics in a matter as serious as the threat of nuclear war. President Putin should silence his increasingly erratic and provocative subordinate. Trump should take heed of his own words and moderate his own often overblown language and threats.
Putin for his part is correct to say that "in order to approach the issue (and end to the Ukraine war) peacefully, we need to have detailed conversations, and not in public." This would require the Trump administration to prepare a detailed plan for peace and develop a confidential "back channel" through which to present it to the Russian government.
However, if such confidential discussions were to have any chance of success, it would also be necessary for the Russian government greatly to moderate its present conditions for a peace settlement.
Anatol Lieven is Director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He was formerly a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar and in the War Studies Department of King’s College London.
Top photo credit: Dimitri Medvedev (Anton Veselov/Shutterstock) and Donald Trump (Lev Radin/Shutterstock)
Top photo credit: Lai Ching-te (William Lai), the President of Taiwan pose with soldier during his inspection of the Navy's Taiwan-built Xu Jiang stealth missile corvettes in Keelung, Taiwan, in July 13, 2024. (JamesonWu1972/Shutterstock)
Earlier this week, the Financial Times reported that the Trump administration denied permission for Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te to transit the U.S. en route to his diplomatic trip to Latin America. The U.S. decision eventually led Lai to cancel his trip, according to the report.
The Trump administration’s blocking of Lai’s stopover has drawn criticism across Washington’s foreign policy establishment, including from think tank experts and former officials. Some critics stress the moral inadequacy of the decision, arguing that the U.S. should not be turning its back on Taiwan, a longtime democratic friend, particularly when the island is subject to increasing diplomatic and military pressure from China. Others point to the danger of eroding deterrence; that is, how Washington’s decision might signal weakness and embolden Beijing at a critical moment.
Such criticisms reflect valid concerns. However, the administration’s decision to avoid high-profile interactions with Lai this time around makes sense given its diplomatic focus on ongoing tariff and related negotiations with China. Moreover, there was considerable risk that Beijing would use Lai’s visit as a justification for intensifying its already escalating saber-rattling against Taiwan, consequently making the state of deterrence more fragile.
Lai’s trip, initially scheduled for early August, would have coincided with Washington and Beijing's active negotiations to reach a trade deal, which is a high priority for Trump’s foreign and domestic agenda. Just this Monday and Tuesday, senior American and Chinese officials were meeting in Stockholm, and talks are expected to resume throughout the coming weeks. Allowing Lai’s stay in the U.S. for a series of high-profile activities, reportedly including an event in New York with a major U.S. think tank, could jeopardize the trade talks.
Historically, China has opposed high-profile political interactions between Taipei and Washington, including Taiwanese presidents visiting the U.S., viewing them as a tool for Taiwan to promote its “independence” and Washington’s implicit endorsement. To be sure, Chinese reactions have varied depending on the geopolitical climate and the perceived political significance. When Taiwan-China relations and U.S.-China relations were relatively stable, and the scope of interactions was kept fairly limited in terms of formality and visibility, Beijing’s responses to Taiwanese presidential stopovers in the U.S. tended to be more tolerant, often not going beyond ritualistic rhetorical objections. But when Taiwan-China relations and U.S.-China relations were tense, and the interactions were seen as politically symbolic, Beijing’s reactions tended to be more belligerent and escalatory.
For example, in 1995, with the approval of the Bill Clinton administration, then-Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui — a strongly nationalist figure (or pro-independence from China’s viewpoint) who had a conflictual relationship with Beijing — visited New York and delivered a major speech on Taiwan’s transformation from authoritarianism to democracy at Cornell University. Lee’s visit provoked Beijing to recall its ambassador from Washington and ramp up its military threats against Taiwan, which ended up triggering what is known as the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis between the U.S. and China.
A more recent case took place when Lai’s predecessor, Tsai Ing-wen — who had a tense relationship with Beijing due to her firm stance on the issue of sovereignty and independence — visited the U.S. in 2023 and participated in various high-profile activities, including meetings with senior U.S. politicians and a think tank event. Beijing responded by conducting large-scale military drills encircling Taiwan for three days.
In today’s context, tensions in Taiwan-China relations and U.S.-China relations are worryingly high. Beijing is deeply pessimistic about Lai — known for his pro-independence credentials — and has been hostile toward his government. As with his predecessor Tsai, Lai has also remained hardline toward Beijing regarding Taiwan’s sovereignty, if not tougher in rhetoric. Add to this, mutual suspicions between the U.S. and China about their intentions continue to deepen as “great power competition” overshadows their relationship.
Given the fraught dynamics in the U.S.-Taiwan-China triangular relationship, it was likely that Lai’s visit would prompt an aggressive Chinese response that would risk derailing, at least temporarily, the trade talks. Perhaps recognizing the volatility of the situation amid high-stakes negotiations with China, Washington appears to have chosen to avoid provoking Beijing.
Essentially, the Trump administration’s decision to veto Lai’s stopover has no real impact on the concrete cooperation between the U.S. and Taiwan. Nor does it suggest the administration will not allow future transits. Behind the optics, the structure of cooperation remains business as usual, as evidenced by the administration’s recent pitch to Congress to expand military aid to Taiwan.
The takeaway here is not that high-profile political engagement with Taiwan has no value, but to think more carefully about the benefits and costs of such symbolic interactions. Taiwanese presidential transits to the U.S. or visits to Taiwan by high-level American officials can be meaningful in terms of demonstrating mutual friendship. But ultimately, practical cooperation, not symbolic visits, will be the decisive factor in U.S.-Taiwan ties and the state of deterrence vis-à-vis China more broadly.
Furthermore, limiting high-profile symbolic interactions with Taipei could better position Washington to practice both deterrence and reassurance vis-à-vis Beijing. By doing so, Washington could avoid creating unnecessary pretexts for Chinese saber-rattling, thereby reducing a potential source of escalation, while continuing to support Taiwan's defense efforts. Simultaneously, Washington’s restrained approach to political engagement with Taipei could help reassure Beijing about the continued U.S. adherence to the One China policy — that it seeks to promote a peaceful resolution of cross-strait differences, not Taiwan’s independence.
All that said, there are legitimate concerns to be raised about how the U.S. blocking of Lai’s transit can give the impression that Washington is willing to compromise U.S. security interests regarding Taiwan for a trade deal with Beijing. Such an impression could mislead Beijing into believing that it can leverage trade talks to extract security concessions regarding Taiwan, such as loosening or cutting U.S. military support for the island.
The revelation from yesterday’s report that the Taiwanese defense minister’s scheduled visit to Washington in June was cancelled after a call between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping further highlights the risk of Beijing’s possible overreach in negotiations.
To ensure negotiations are grounded on realistic expectations, U.S. officials should make it clear to their Chinese counterparts that security and trade issues are to be kept separate, and also advise Trump that it is necessary to avoid such entanglement.
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Top Image Credit: US presidential candidate US Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) (L) makes his point as US Senator John McCain (R-AZ ) adjusts his shirt collar as they take part in the CNN/Los Angeles Times Republican presidential debate at Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California January 30, 2008. Air Force One used by Reagan is in background. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith (UNITED STATES) US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 2008 (USA)
Ron Paul is turning 90 on August 20. At 72, he was a revolutionary.
Today, there is a raucous foreign policy debate within the Republican Party. Populist, realist and libertarian “America First” Republicans argue against endless wars and for fiscal responsibility, while holdover hawks continue to insist on a robust U.S. hand and military presence anywhere they can get it, no matter the cost.
In 2008, there was no debate. While broad public opinion had soured on the Iraq War and President George W. Bush’s approval reached historic lows, the GOP of that era had spent nearly a decade marinating in blind support for militarism, the PATRIOT Act, and torture in the name of “counterterrorism."
War was who Republicans were. It wasn’t a question. It was GOP identity. Sen. John McCain became the 2008 GOP presidential nominee based on that identity, and lost.
Throughout the 2008 Republican presidential primaries, Congressman Ron Paul tried to warn his party that America’s interventionist foreign policy had not only been a disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan, but was bad for America in general — and Republicans in particular.
They couldn’t hear it. Like clockwork, each time Paul criticized U.S. foreign policy during the debates, Republicans accused him of siding with the enemy. After explaining how perpetual American intervention created tension abroad that led to 9/11, Fox News moderator Chris Wallace said to Paul, "You're saying we should take our marching orders from al Qaeda?"
Paul replied, citing the need for a congressional declaration of war, "No, I'm saying we should take our marching orders from the Constitution!"
The other candidates all laughed at Paul. Telling Republicans to tone down the warmongering in 2008 was like telling Sydney Sweeney to lighten up on sex appeal in 2025.
Paul did not win the nomination, but became arguably the most influential GOP candidate in that election precisely because he was the only Republican arguing for a more restrained foreign policy. He became one of the most popular candidates, in terms of raw grassroots support, based on his staunch antiwar message, drawing thousands of supporters to his rallies, disproportionately young.
Paul’s popularity exploded due to one particular debate. As Jim Antle observed at The American Conservative weeks before Paul retired from Congress in early 2013, “On May 15, 2007, the Republican contenders debated in Columbia, South Carolina. Paul argued that American intervention in the Middle East — bombings, sanctions, and efforts to destabilize foreign governments — helped turn local populations and their co-religionists against us, to the point that they would contemplate terrorist attacks like those on 9/11.”
“Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attacks, sir?” asked the Fox News moderator.
“Paul had said nothing of the sort,” Antle continued, “but neither did he react to the implication behind the question as forcefully as he might have. Giuliani pounced. ‘That’s an extraordinary statement, as somebody who lived through the attack of Sept. 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before, and I’ve heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11.’”
The audience erupted. After the applause died down Giuliani demanded that Paul take back what he said, “I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us he didn’t really mean that.”
That’s when Ron Paul doubled down. He detailed the CIA term “blowback” as an explanation for 9/11, an argument that Bush-Cheney, neocon propaganda-soaked audience definitely did not want to hear and resented Paul for making it.
But after years of foreign policy failure in the Middle East, certain kinds of Republicans were open to Paul’s message. Many independents were drawn to his campaign. Paul also attracted a significant number of progressives (Paul later said he would put his longtime friend, progressive Democrat Congressman Dennish Kucinich in his cabinet). For the Paul faithful, it was all about the ideas.
At the time of Paul and Giuliani’s heated exchange, Rudy was considered the frontrunner and Ron was the gadfly. By the time the 2008 election was over, Paul would receive one million primary votes, more than Giuliani who dropped out. In 2012, Paul doubled that number to two million. The nominees in both cycles, McCain and later, Mitt Romney, both ran and lost on Bush-style neoconservative foreign policy agendas.
The next Republican actually elected president ran on ‘America First’ foreign policy platform that promised to end “endless wars” and even went so far as to claim George W. Bush “lied” America into the Iraq War. He sounded like Ron Paul.
Has Donald Trump always lived up to his antiwar rhetoric? Not even close.
Did he change the foreign policy conversation in the Republican Party? Undeniably.
Today, your typical, red-meat, rightwing Republican might talk about foreign policy in ways that seem closer to Paul than McCain or Romney. Conservatives can denounce foreign intervention and aid and those conversations now fit comfortably on the right. Whereas Paul’s Republican detractors used to love to smear him as siding with terrorists, hawks, neocons, and Democrats who reflexively accuse Trump of being “Putin’s puppet” are immediately suspect to MAGA members. That trick just doesn’t work anymore with most of the Republican base.
Trump ran for president within a post Bush-Cheney GOP that didn’t know what it stood for anymore other than being against Barack Obama. It quickly came to stand for Trump, whatever that might have meant in any given moment, but that upheaval did usher in a radical rethinking of Republican foreign policy.
Paul ran for president when war was the Republican religion, undeniable and unassailable, in which heretics were to be excommunicated. Later, it was so many neocons who would actually jump ship.
What Republican foreign policy is in 2025 is a very different conversation than it was in 2008. Donald Trump might have upended that consensus, but 17 years ago Ron Paul became the first candidate to so fearlessly question it, leading to more challenges and changing even more minds ever since.
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Top photo credit: Launch of Duncan on the Clyde in Scotland MOD, Royal Navy, 2010. (Ian Arthur/MOD/Wikimedia)
Having spent the past decade telling the British public that Russia poses the biggest ‘immediate threat’ to the United Kingdom, the idea that Britain should get ready to fight China is idiotic and irresponsible.
During a visit to Australia to join HMS Prince of Wales, which is currently leading Carrier Strike Group 25 to Asia,UK Defense Secretary John Healey implied that the UK might be willing to fight China in the Pacific over Taiwan. “If we have to fight, as we have done in the past, Australia and the UK are nations that will fight together. We exercise together and by exercising together and being more ready to fight, we deter better together.”
Rather than staying silent on military engagement over Taiwan, as UK governments have tended to do, Healey is trying to position Britain’s military forces as a deterrent to a resurgent China. This is deluded, and not just because the UK has shown itself unwilling to fight Russia directly over Ukraine.
Russia, as it were, is considered much more of a “threat” to European security than China. But even with Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s pledge of increasing defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2035 – and it is questionable whether this is affordable given the UK’s fiscal constraints – Britain most certainly isn’t big enough to fight both China and Russia, even if it wanted to.
Indeed, one of the arguments in favor of the U.S. pressuring Europe to foot the bill for ongoing war with Russia in Ukraine, is to allow America to refocus its energies in the Indo-Pacific region. An often and, in my view, distasteful mantra advanced by even the most hawkish US politicians on Russia, is that Ukrainian troops are fighting so U.S. troops don’t have to.
Healey’s comments display a worrying lack of strategic focus. The recent UK Strategic Defence Review (SDR) committed British naval forces heavily to the creation of an Atlantic Bastion designed to secure the North Atlantic from the growing threat of Russia’s rapidly expanding sub-surface fleet. Since 2011 alone, the Russian navy has taken delivery of 27 new submarines with more under construction.
At best, the SDR sets a target for the building of up to 12 new attack submarines to replace the five Astute class submarines currently in service, two of which are in refit. Any new vessels wouldn’t arrive at the earliest until the late 2030s. It also envisions a complex system of ocean sensors and uncrewed sub-surface assets to counter Russian submarines. Simply securing the Atlantic from a rapidly rising Russian threat will require extensive cooperation with European navies, in particular with France, Germany and Norway.
Even with a replenished fleet, UK naval power still won’t be sufficient to have global impact. The Carrier Strike Group 25, currently in the Pacific, has deployed a significant chunk of available naval assets: one carrier, one destroyer, one frigate, and one attack submarine; that’s right, all of four vessels.
As I have said before, the Chinese won’t be worried by this. China currently boasts at least 234 vessels, which is larger than the U.S. fleet, having outstripped American warship production by a significant margin since 2010. While the Chinese fleet is thought to be deficient in some key capabilities, such as aircraft carriers, larger fleets have won “25 out of 28 historical wars.”
Admittedly, one of three victories in which an outnumbered fleet prevailed was the Battle of Trafalgar where the Royal Navy pitted itself against France and Spain off the coast of Cadiz. Admiral Horatio Nelson had at his disposal 27 ships of the line and 4 frigates. This compares with the modern Royal Navy which, not including submarines, which didn’t exist in 1805, has 24 blue-water fighting vessels, including aircraft carriers, destroyers, frigates and mine counter-measures vessels.
The idea that, even in its entirety, this can deter China is a fantasy. Of course, any British and Australian military engagement in Taiwan would be under the command of a U.S. admiral as part of a fleet possibly supplemented by those Asian countries that might be willing to join the fight, possibly including Japan and South Korea.
A doomsday scenario of a World War III in the Pacific would draw much of the Royal Navy away from British shores, leaving our country even more exposed to Russia. So, while Healey’s hawkish comments might play well with breathless Western journalists at a presser on the deck of a British aircraft carrier docked in Darwin, they make no sense in the real world.
And, in any case, they make the defense secretary appear tone deaf and out of touch given the diplomatic pivot towards China that has taken place under Starmer’s government.
To his credit, the prime minister has sought to position Sino-British relations somewhere between the naivete of former Prime Minister David Cameron’s unpopular “golden era” and the aggressively Sinophobic policies adopted by Prime Minister Theresa May and her successors. That has led to unprecedented political engagement by UK ministers since the end of 2024, including visits by the foreign secretary and chancellor of the exchequer, chief of the defense staff and, most recently, the national security adviser.
In the face of intense media scrutiny of any moves that signal a softening of the UK’s stance towards China, the Labour government is trying to pull off the impossible. Attract much- needed Chinese investment into Britain while keeping Chinese hands off of sensitive industries and critical national infrastructure. Disagree in private about issues around democracy in Hong Kong and Uighur rights in Xinjiang, while reopening dormant areas of economic and financial cooperation.
Of course, the biggest challenge Starmer faces on China is in trying to boost economic and trade relations at the same time he attempts to do the same with the U.S. and the European Union, without making any trade-offs along the way.
And therein lies the true vacuity of Healey’s comments. They may play well with AUKUS allies but will be understood as provocative in Beijing. This episode offers a healthy reminder that Britain will struggle to be friends with everyone, while looking to pick fights around the globe.
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