Last year’s high-stakes meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy imploded in real time. Cameras rolling, Zelenskyy audaciously contradicted President Donald Trump — only to be berated at length and then ejected from the White House before a planned ceremonial lunch. Now, those reality TV moments that were a defining feature of year one have stopped. Trump has not staged one public Oval Office spectacle with a foreign leader this year. But that could change when German Chancellor Friedrich Merz meets with Trump on Tuesday. Initially, the two had been expected to meet almost entirely behind closed doors, according to two people familiar with the planning and granted anonymity to discuss it. However, the Iran strikes that began over the weekend could have changed the initial decision. Merz has been far more supportive of the strikes than other European leaders and could serve as a useful validator for the president if he opts to add a press availability during what is being called a “working visit.” But before Iran scrambled Washington’s routine, the shift away from public sprays appeared in part to be an acknowledgement that foreign leaders simply don’t want to perform statecraft in front of live cameras. And, it seems that Trump may be tiring of the format, too. Most heads of state prepared assiduously for their encounters, aware that taking part in the show — and laying it on thick — was the price of the ticket. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer showed up with a letter from King Charles III to break the ice. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who brought two PGA Tour pros to impress Trump, watched as aides dimmed the lights and played a video the president said proved genocide against white South Africans. In recent months, though, several leaders arranging visits to the White House have requested that they not be subjected to such a lengthy press inquisition in the Oval Office, according to three people familiar with the matter who were granted anonymity to speak about sensitive diplomatic conversations. “Foreign leaders don’t like them,” said one of the people. “It’s too easy for something to go wrong.” Trump, according to a senior White House official, granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, has had no problem granting the request. “The leaders have asked not to do it, and he’s like, ‘Okay. Fine,’” the official said, adding that the president may have also grown a bit bored with the whole routine. But there is also a sense inside the White House that the appearances alongside visiting leaders were not always serving the president’s best interests. As humiliating as the rolling press conferences could be for heads of state forced to play to Trump’s vanity or to bite their tongue following inaccurate or insulting remarks, they may also have inadvertently reinforced public perceptions that the White House is working hard to erase in the face of flagging poll numbers and an approaching election. In part, that’s the portrait of a president too cloistered inside the White House and too focused on foreign policy. A person close to the White House, also granted anonymity to speak candidly about the situation, suggested that the president’s team has “overplayed” its reliance on the gold-encrusted Oval Office as the primary backdrop for Trump’s daily activities. “The Oval Office is an extremely significant place for people who watch cable news, but a majority of Americans don’t watch cable news and they don’t see the president in the Oval Office for the 12 media engagements he does in a week,” the person said. “And while the bullhorn of the Oval Office is extremely loud, it is just not piercing through.” The president continues to frequently take questions from the press, especially when departing from the White House and traveling aboard Air Force One. But last week, most of Trump’s Oval Office meetings — with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, GOP congressional leaders and the CEO of Netflix — stayed closed to the White House press corps. That’s a change from last year, when the press was frequently summoned to the Oval Office multiple times in a day, sometimes with little warning, for events that weren’t listed on the president’s public schedule. Executive order signings often morphed into hour-long press conferences, with Trump taking questions on any and all matters, sometimes as Cabinet members, lawmakers or other guests stood patiently behind him. Last year, he hosted 46 different world leaders at the White House, several of them more than once. Ultimately, it prompted former MAGA-firebrand-turned-Trump-critic Marjorie Taylor Greene to publicly bash the president for what she said was veering away from an America First agenda. She specifically called out Trump for hosting Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa in November, saying, “I am against bringing any foreign leader that is a terrorist or oversees killing innocent people into our country and into the Oval Office.” Greene’s criticism came just days after Republicans got drubbed in several off-year election contests that offered an ominous taste of what may be coming in this year’s midterm contests. While dismissing the attack and lashing out at his long-time ally, Trump opted to keep al-Sharaa’s visit behind closed doors – but a week later hosted Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, inviting the press in for a lengthy, televised question-and-answer session. The president’s warm welcomes for several autocrats, from El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele to bin Salman, who he defended from questions about his role in the 2019 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and later hosted at a lavish East Room dinner, stood in sharp contrast to more contentious meetings with Zelenskyy and Ramaphosa. That has drawn significant criticism, mostly from Democrats upset by the president’s general indifference to America’s traditional alliances. But even the leaders who have emerged unscathed from their White House meetings have grown reluctant to repeat the experience. “There is now a template for how to survive the experience,” said one European official. “But having so much of the meeting be in front of the cameras, it doesn’t leave much time for the substance. And in many cases, there are important things to discuss that you can’t, or shouldn’t get into when there are reporters in the room.” Alex Gangitano contributed to this report.

LONDON — Green Party Leader Zack Polanski said Tuesday he will support a motion titled “Zionism is racism” if it is linked to the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza. His comments come days before a crucial by-election in the Greater Manchester constituency of Gorton and Denton, where the Greens have presented themselves as the main left-wing challengers to the incumbent Labour Party. The motion, which will be put forward at the party’s spring conference next month, is titled “Zionism is Racism,” and also backs the “right of the Palestinian people to resistance and liberation from Israeli occupation, domination and subjugation.” Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel on Sunday condemned the motion as “one of the most hateful and racist documents I’ve ever read.” Polanski, the Jewish leader of the eco-populist force, said his support for the motion would depend on the definition of Zionism. “I can give you some different definitions of Zionism and we can talk about whether they’re racist or not,” he told Times Radio. “If we’re talking about the definition that this Israeli government are clearly perpetrating through a genocide in Gaza, then yes, absolutely. That’s racist.” He stressed that any of the party’s more than 195,000 members could put forward a motion, and he will be “listening carefully to the debate,” adding that it isn’t “particularly helpful to have an argument or a debate about labels.” Pushed on whether he would vote for the motion, he said: “I’ll wait to hear the debate, but absolutely, if the definition of Zionism is what is happening right now by the Israeli government, then yes, absolutely, that’s racist and I’ll vote for it.” The by-election in Greater Manchester comes after a terrorist attack on Jews in northern Manchester last October at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue, where two people were killed. The attack took place during the Jewish Holiday of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.

LONDON — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney left Beijing and promptly declared the U.S.-led “world order” broken. Don’t expect his British counterpart to do the same. Keir Starmer will land in the Chinese capital Wednesday for the first visit by a U.K. prime minister since 2018. By meeting President Xi Jinping, he will end what he has called an “ice age” under the previous Conservative administration, and try to win deals that he can sell to voters as a boost to Britain’s sputtering economy. Starmer is one of a queue of leaders flocking to the world’s second-largest economy, including France’s Emmanuel Macron in December and Germany’s Friedrich Merz next month. Like Carney did in Davos last week, the British PM has warned the world is the most unstable it has been for a generation. Yet unlike Carney, Starmer is desperate not to paint this as a rupture from the U.S. — and to avoid the criticism Trump unleashed on Carney in recent days over his dealings with China. The U.K. PM is trying to ride three horses at once, staying friendly — or at least engaging — with Washington D.C., Brussels and Beijing.  It is his “three-body problem,” joked a senior Westminster figure who has long worked on British-China relations. POLITICO spoke to 22 current and former officials, MPs, diplomats, industry figures and China experts, most of whom were granted anonymity to speak frankly. They painted a picture of a leader walking the same tightrope he always has surrounded by grim choices — from tricky post-Brexit negotiations with the EU, to Donald Trump taking potshots at British policies and freezing talks on a U.K.-U.S. tech deal. Starmer wants his (long-planned) visit to China to secure growth, but be cautious enough not to compromise national security or enrage Trump. He appears neither to have ramped up engagement with Beijing in response to Trump, nor reduced it amid criticism of China’s espionage and human rights record. In short, he doesn’t want any drama. “Starmer is more managerial. He wants to keep the U.K.’s relationships with big powers steady,” said one person familiar with planning for the trip. “You can’t really imagine him doing a Carney or a Macron and using the trip to set out a big geopolitical vision.” An official in 10 Downing Street added: “He’s clear that it is in the U.K.’s interests to have a relationship with the world’s second biggest economy. While the U.S. is our closest ally, he rejects the suggestion that means you can’t have pragmatic dealings with China.” He will be hoping Trump — whose own China visit is planned for April — sees it that way too. BRING OUT THE CAVALRY Starmer has one word in his mind for this trip — growth, which was just 0.1 percent in the three months to September. The prime minister will be flanked by executives from City giants HSBC, Standard Chartered, Schroders and the London Stock Exchange Group; pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca; car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover; energy provider Octopus; and Brompton, the folding bicycle manufacturer. The priority in Downing Street will be bringing back “a sellable headline,” said the person familiar with trip planning quoted above. The economy is the overwhelming focus. While officials discussed trying to secure a political win, such as China lifting sanctions it imposed on British parliamentarians in 2021, one U.K. official said they now believe this to be unlikely. Between them, five people familiar with the trip’s planning predicted a large number of deals, dialogues and memorandums of understanding — but largely in areas with the fewest national security concerns. These are likely to include joint work on medical, health and life sciences, cooperation on climate science, and work to highlight Mandarin language schemes, the people said.  Officials are also working on the mutual recognition of professional qualifications and visa-free travel for short stays, while firms have been pushing for more expansive banking and insurance licences for British companies operating in China. The U.K. is meanwhile likely to try to persuade Beijing to lower import tariffs on Scotch whisky, which doubled in February 2025. A former U.K. official who was involved in Britain’s last prime ministerial visit to China, by Theresa May in 2018, predicted all deals will already be “either 100 or 99 percent agreed, in the system, and No. 10 will already have a firm number in its head that it can announce.” THREADING THE NEEDLE Yet all five people agreed there is unlikely to be a deal on heavy energy infrastructure, including wind turbine technology, that could leave Britain vulnerable to China. The U.K. has still not decided whether to let Ming Yang, a Chinese firm, invest £1.5 billion in a wind farm off the coast of Scotland. And while Carney agreed to ease tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), three of the five people familiar with the trip’s planning said that any deep co-operation on EV technology is likely to be off the table. One of them predicted: “This won’t be another Canada moment. I don’t see us opening the floodgates on EVs.” Britain is trying to stick to “amber and green areas” for any deals, said the first person familiar with the planning. The second of the five people said: “I think they‘re going for the soft, slightly lovey stuff.” Britain has good reason to be reluctant, as Chinese-affiliated groups have long been accused of hacking and espionage, including against MPs and Britain’s Electoral Commission. Westminster was gripped by headlines in December about a collapsed case against two men who had been accused of spying for China. Chinese firm Huawei was banned from helping build the U.K.’s 5G phone network in 2020 after pressure from Trump. Even now, Britain’s security agencies are working on mitigations to telecommunications cables near the Tower of London. They pass close to the boundary of China’s proposed embassy, which won planning approval last week. Andrew Small, director of the Asia Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank working on foreign and security policy, said: “The current debate about how to ‘safely’ increase China’s role in U.K. green energy supplies — especially through wind power — has serious echoes of 5G all over again, and is a bigger concern on the U.S. side than the embassy decision.”  Starmer and his team also “don’t want to antagonize the Americans” ahead of Trump’s own visit in April, said the third of the five people familiar with trip planning. “They’re on eggshells … if they announce a new dialogue on United Nations policy or whatever bullshit they can come up with, any of those could be interpreted as a broadside to the Trump administration.” All these factors mean Starmer’s path to a “win” is narrow. Tahlia Peterson, a fellow working on China at Chatham House, the international affairs think tank, said: “Starmer isn’t going to ‘reset’ the relationship in one visit or unlock large-scale Chinese investment into Britain’s core infrastructure.” Small said foreign firms are being squeezed out of the Chinese market and Xi is “weaponizing” the dependency on Chinese supply chains. He added: “Beijing will likely offer extremely minor concessions in areas such as financial services, [amounting to] no more than a rounding error in economic scale.” Chancellor Rachel Reeves knows the pain of this. Britain’s top finance minister was mocked when she returned with just £600 million of agreements from her visit to China a year ago. One former Tory minister said the figure was a “deliberate insult” by China. Even once the big win is in the bag, there is the danger of it falling apart on arrival. Carney announced Canada and China would expand visa-free travel, only for Beijing’s ambassador to Ottawa to say that the move was not yet official. Despite this, businesses have been keen on Starmer’s re-engagement.  Rain Newton-Smith, director-general of the Confederation of British Industry, said firms are concerned about the dependence on Chinese rare earths but added: “If you map supply chains from anywhere, the idea that you can decouple from China is impossible. It’s about how that trade can be facilitated in the best way.” EMBASSY ROW Even if Starmer gets his wins, this visit will bring controversies that (critics say) show the asymmetry in Britain’s relationship with China. A tale of two embassies serves as a good metaphor.  Britain finally approved plans last week for China’s new outpost in London, despite a long row over national security. China held off formally confirming Starmer’s visit until the London embassy decision was finalized, the first person familiar with planning for the trip said. (Others point out Starmer would not want to go until the issue was resolved.) The result was a scramble in which executives were only formally invited a week before take-off. And Britain has not yet received approval to renovate its own embassy in Beijing. Officials privately refer to the building as “falling down,” while one person who has visited said construction materials were piled up against walls. It is “crumbling,” added another U.K. official: “The walls have got cracks on them, the wallpaper’s peeling off, it’s got damp patches.” British officials refused to give any impression of a “quid pro quo” for the two projects under the U.K.’s semi-judicial planning system. But that means much of Whitehall still does not know if Britain’s embassy revamp in Beijing will be approved, or held back until China’s project in London undergoes a further review in the courts. U.K. officials are privately pressing their Chinese counterparts to give the green light. One of the people keenest on a breakthrough will be Britain’s new ambassador to Beijing Peter Wilson, a career diplomat described by people who have met him as “outstanding,” “super smart” and “very friendly.”  For Wilson, hosting Starmer will be one of his trickiest jobs yet. The everyday precautions when doing business in China have made preparations for this trip more intense. Government officials and corporate executives are bringing secure devices and will have been briefed on the risk of eavesdropping and honeytraps. One member of Theresa May’s 2018 delegation to China recalled opening the door of what they thought was their vehicle, only to see several people with headsets on, listening carefully and typing. They compared it to a scene in a spy film. Activists and MPs will put Starmer under pressure to raise human rights issues — including what campaigners say is a genocide against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang province — on a trip governed by strict protocol where one stray word can derail a deal.  Pro-democracy publisher Jimmy Lai, who has British nationality, is facing sentencing in Hong Kong imminently for national security offenses. During the PM’s last meeting with Xi in 2024, Chinese officials bundled British journalists out of the room when he raised the case. Campaigners had thought Lai’s sentencing could take place this week. All these factors mean tension in the British state — which has faced a tussle between “securocrats” and departments pushing for growth — has been high ahead of the trip. Government comments on China are workshopped carefully before publication. Earlier this month, Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper told POLITICO her work on Beijing involves looking at “transnational repression” and “espionage threats.” But when Chancellor Rachel Reeves met China’s Finance Minister He Lifeng in Davos last week to tee up Starmer’s visit, the U.K. Treasury did not publicize the meeting — beyond a little-noticed photo on its Flickr account. SLOW BOAT TO CHINA Whatever the controversies, Labour’s China stance has been steadily taking shape since before Starmer took office in 2024. Labour drew inspiration from its sister party in Australia and the U.S. Democrats, both of which had regular meetings with Beijing. Party aides argued that after a brief “golden era” under Conservative PM David Cameron, Britain engaged less with China than with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The result of Labour’s thinking was the policy of “three Cs” — “challenge, compete, and cooperate.” A procession of visits to Beijing followed, most notably Reeves last year, culminating in Starmer’s trip. His National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell was involved in planning across much of 2025, even travelling to meet China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, in November. Starmer teed up this week’s visit with a December speech arguing the “binary” view of China had persisted for too long. He promised to engage with Beijing carefully while taking a “more transactional approach to pretty well everything.”  The result was that this visit has long been locked in; just as Labour aides argue the London embassy decision was set in train in 2018, when the Tory government gave diplomatic consent for the site. Labour ministers “just want to normalize” the fact of dealing with China, said the senior Westminster figure quoted above. Newton-Smith added: “I think the view is that the government’s engagement with eyes wide open is the right strategy. And under the previous government, we did lose out.” But for each person who praises the re-engagement, there are others who say it has left Britain vulnerable while begging for scraps at China’s table. Hawks argue the hard details behind the “three Cs” were long nebulous, while Labour’s long-awaited “audit” of U.K.-China relations was delayed before being folded briefly into a wider security document. “Every single bad decision now can be traced back to the first six months,” argued the third person familiar with planning quoted above. “They were absolutely ill-prepared and made a series of decisions that have boxed them into a corner.” They added: “The government lacks the killer instinct to deal with China. It’s not in their DNA.” Luke de Pulford, a human rights campaigner and director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, argued the Tories had engaged with China — Foreign Secretary James Cleverly visited in 2023 — and Labour was simply going much further. “China is pursuing an enterprise to reshape the global order in its own image, and to that end, to change our institutions and way of life to the extent that they’re an obstacle to it,” he said. “That’s what they’re up to — and we keep falling for it.” END OF THE OLD ORDER? His language may be less dramatic, but Starmer’s visit to China does have some parallels with Canada. Carney’s trip was the first by a Canadian PM since 2017, and he and Xi agreed a “new strategic partnership.” Later at Davos, the Canadian PM talked of “the end of a pleasant fiction” and warned multilateral institutions such as the United Nations are under threat. One British industry figure who attended Davos said of Carney’s speech: “It was great. Everyone was talking about it. Someone said to me that was the best and most poignant speech they’d ever seen at the World Economic Forum. That may be a little overblown, but I guess most of the speeches at the WEF are quite dull.” The language used by Starmer, a former human rights lawyer devoted to multilateralism, has not been totally dissimilar. Britain could no longer “look only to international institutions to uphold our values and interests,” he said in December. “We must do it ourselves through deals and alliances.” But while some in the U.K. government privately agree with Carney’s point, the real difference is the two men’s approach to Trump. Starmer will temper his messaging carefully to avoid upsetting either his Chinese hosts or the U.S., even as Trump throws semi-regular rocks at Britain. To Peterson, this is unavoidable. “China, the U.S. and the EU are likely to continue to dominate global economic growth for the foreseeable future,” she said. “Starmer’s choice is not whether to engage, but how.” Esther Webber contributed reporting.

BRUSSELS — A coalition of European left parties has launched a call for signatures to force the European Commission to suspend the EU’s association agreement with Israel over Gaza. Despite a U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement in October, Israel has kept attacking targets in the Gaza Strip with airstrikes, drones and tanks, prompting the pro-Palestinian movement to renew its calls for the EU to take action against Israel. The coalition — led by France’s La France Insoumise, Spain’s Podemos, Portugal’s Bloco de Esquerda, and Nordic left parties — has launched a European Citizens Initiative titled “Justice for Palestine” calling on the EU executive suspend ties with Israel over its “genocide against the Palestinian population, and its ongoing violations of international law and human rights.” If the initiative receives a million signatures from at least seven EU counties — a likely outcome given the popularity of the issue — the Commission will be forced to state which actions, if any, it will take in respond to the initiative. “The EU pretends everything is back to normal, but we will not turn a blind eye to what is happening in Gaza,” said MEP Manon Aubry, the leader of La France Insoumise, adding the “EU is helping to finance genocide” by not suspending trade relations with Israel. More than 100 children have been killed since the ceasefire agreement was signed in March, UNICEF said Tuesday. The Commission already proposed in November to suspend some parts of the association agreement and to sanction some “extremist ministers” in the cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But parts of the package were never implemented because they required unanimous approval from EU countries. After the ceasefire was reached the Commission proposed withdrawing the measures; the issue has remained frozen ever since. Foreign ministers from numerous EU countries as well as the U.K., Norway, Canada and Japan sharply criticized an Israeli decision to bar 37 international non-governmental organizations from providing aid to Gaza. The humanitarian situation in the besieged territory remains dire, with many living outdoors in winter weather. Four people were killed on Tuesday when a storm caused buildings that had been damaged in the war to collapse, according to local media.

While U.S. President Donald Trump brashly cited the Monroe Doctrine to explain the capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, he didn’t leave it there. He also underscored a crude tenet guiding his foreign adventures: “It’s important to make me happy,” he told reporters. Maduro had failed in that task after shunning a surrender order by Trump — hence, he was plucked in the dead of night by Delta Force commandos from his Caracas compound, and unceremoniously deposited at New York’s Metropolitan Detention Center. Yet despite the U.S. president’s admonishment about needing to be kept happy — an exhortation accompanied by teasing hints of possible future raids on the likes of Cuba, Colombia and Mexico — one continent has stood out in its readiness to defy him. Maduro’s capture has been widely denounced by African governments and the continent’s regional organizations alike. South Africa has been among the most outspoken, with its envoy to the U.N. warning that such actions left unpunished risk “a regression into a world preceding the United Nations, a world that gave us two brutal world wars, and an international system prone to severe structural instability and lawlessness.” Both the African Union, a continent-wide body comprising 54 recognized nations, and the 15-member Economic Community of West African States have categorically condemned Trump’s gunboat diplomacy as well. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni even had the temerity to issue a blunt dare to Washington: If American forces attempt the same trick in his country, he bragged, “we can defeat them” — a reversal of his 2018 bromance with the U.S. president, when he said he “loves Trump” because of his frankness. Africa’s forthrightness and unity over Maduro greatly contrasts with the more fractured response from Latin America, as well as the largely hedged responses coming from Europe, which is more focused on Trump’s coveting of Greenland.   Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni had the temerity to issue a blunt dare to Washington: If American forces attempt the same trick in his country, he bragged, “we can defeat them” | Badru Katumba/AFP via Getty Images Fearful of risking an open rift with Washington, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer waited 16 hours after Maduro and his wife were seized before gingerly stepping on a diplomatic tightrope, careful to avoid falling one way or the other. While highlighting his preference for observing international law, he said: “We shed no tears about the end of his regime.” Others similarly avoided incurring Trump’s anger, with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis flatly saying now isn’t the right time to discuss Trump’s muscular methods — a position shared by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. So, why haven’t African leaders danced to the same circumspect European tune? Partly because they have less to lose. Europe still harbors hope it can influence Trump, soften him and avoid an irreparable breach in the transatlantic alliance, especially when it comes to Greenland, suggested Tighisti Amare of Britain’s Chatham House. “With dramatic cuts in U.S. development funds to Africa already implemented by Trump, Washington’s leverage is not as strong as it once was. And the U.S. doesn’t really give much importance to Africa, unless it’s the [Democratic Republic of the Congo], where there are clear U.S. interests on critical minerals,” Amare told POLITICO. “In terms of trade volume, the EU remains the most important region for Africa, followed by China, and with the Gulf States increasingly becoming more important,” she added. Certainly, Trump hasn’t gone out of his way to make friends in Africa. Quite the reverse — he’s used the continent as a punching bag, delivering controversial remarks stretching back to his first term, when he described African nations as “shithole countries.” And there have since been rifts galore over travel bans, steep tariffs and the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is credited with saving millions of African lives over decades. U.S. President Donald Trump holds up a printed article from “American Thinker” while accusing South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa of state-sanctioned violence against white farmers in South Africa. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images In May, Trump also lectured South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office over what he claimed amounted to genocide against white South Africans, at one point ordering the lights be dimmed to show clips of leaders from a South African minority party encouraging attacks on the country’s white population. Washington then boycotted the G20 summit hosted by South Africa in November, and disinvited the country from this year’s gathering, which will be hosted by the U.S. According to Amare, Africa’s denunciation of Maduro’s abduction doesn’t just display concern about Venezuela; in some part, it’s also fed by the memory of colonialism. “It’s not just about solidarity, but it’s also about safeguarding the rules that limit how powerful states can use force against more vulnerable states,” she said. African countries see Trump’s move against Maduro “as a genuine threat to international law and norms that protect the survival of the sovereignty of small states.” Indeed, African leaders might also be feeling their own collars tighten, and worrying about being in the firing line. “There’s an element of self-preservation kicking in here because some African leaders share similarities with the Maduro government,” said Oge Onubogu, director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “In some countries, people on the street and in even civil society have a different take, and actually see the removal of Maduro as a good thing.” The question is, will African leaders be wary of aligning with either Russian President Vladimir Putin or China’s Xi Jinping, now that Trump has exposed the impotence of friendship with either by deposing the Venezuelan strongman? According to Onubogu, even before Maduro’s ouster, African leaders understood the world order had changed dramatically, and that we’re back in the era of great power competition. “Individual leaders will make their own specific calculations based on what’s in their favor and their interests. I wouldn’t want to generalize and say some African countries might step back from engaging with China or Russia. They will play the game as they try to figure out how they can come out on top.”

Mathias Döpfner is chair and CEO of Axel Springer, POLITICO’s parent company. America and Europe have been transmitting on different wavelengths for some time now. And that is dangerous — especially for Europe. The European reactions to the new U.S. National Security Strategy paper and to Donald Trump’s recent criticism of the Old Continent were, once again, reflexively offended and incapable of accepting criticism: How dare he, what an improper intrusion! But such reactions do not help; they do harm. Two points are lost in these sour responses. First: Most Americans criticize Europe because the continent matters to them. Many of those challenging Europe — even JD Vance or Trump, even Elon Musk or Sam Altman — emphasize this repeatedly. The new U.S. National Security Strategy, scandalized above all by those who have not read it, states explicitly: “Our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory. We will need a strong Europe to help us successfully compete, and to work in concert with us to prevent any adversary from dominating Europe.” And Trump says repeatedly, literally or in essence, in his interview with POLITICO: “I want to see a strong Europe.” The transatlantic drift is also a rupture of political language. Trump very often simply says what he thinks — sharply contrasting with many European politicians who are increasingly afraid to say what they believe is right. People sense the castration of thought through a language of evasions. And they turn away. Or toward the rabble-rousers. My impression is that our difficult American friends genuinely want exactly what they say they want: a strong Europe, a reliable and effective partner. But we do not hear it — or refuse to hear it. We hear only the criticism and dismiss it. Criticism is almost always a sign of involvement, of passion. We should worry far more if no criticism arrived. That would signal indifference — and therefore irrelevance. (By the way: Whether we like the critics is of secondary importance.) Responding with hauteur is simply not in our interest. It would be wiser — as Kaja Kallas rightly emphasized — to conduct a dialogue that includes self-criticism, a conversation about strengths, weaknesses and shared interests, and to back words with action on both sides. Which brings us to the second point: Unfortunately, much of the criticism is accurate. Anyone who sees politics as more than a self-absorbed administration of the status quo must concede that for decades Europe has delivered far too little — or nothing at all. Not in terms of above-average growth and prosperity, nor in terms of affordable energy. Europe does not deliver on deregulation or debureaucratization; it does not deliver on digitalization or innovation driven by artificial intelligence. And above all: Europe does not deliver on a responsible and successful migration policy. The world that wishes Europe well looked to the new German government with great hope. Capital flows on the scale of trillions waited for the first positive signals to invest in Germany and Europe. For it seemed almost certain that the world’s third-largest economy would, under a sensible, business-minded and transatlantic chancellor, finally steer a faltering Europe back onto the right path. The disappointment was all the more painful. Aside from the interior minister, the digital minister and the economics minister, the new government delivers in most areas the opposite of what had been promised before the election. The chancellor likes to blame the vice chancellor. The vice chancellor blames his own party. And all together they prefer to blame the Americans and their president. Instead of a European fresh start, we see continued agony and decline. Germany still suffers from its National Socialist trauma and believes that if it remains pleasantly average and certainly not excellent, everyone will love it. France is now paying the price for its colonial legacy in Africa and finds itself — all the way up to a president driven by political opportunism — in the chokehold of Islamist and antisemitic networks. In Britain, the prime minister is pursuing a similar course of cultural and economic submission. And Spain is governed by socialist fantasists who seem to take real pleasure in self-enfeeblement and whose “genocide in Gaza” rhetoric mainly mobilizes bored, well-heeled daughters of the upper middle class. Hope comes from Finland and Denmark, from the Baltic states and Poland, and — surprisingly — from Italy. There, the anti-democratic threats from Russia, China and Iran are assessed more realistically. Above all, there is a healthy drive to be better and more successful than others. From a far weaker starting point, there is an ambition for excellence. What Europe needs is less wounded pride and more patriotism defined by achievement. Unity and decisive action in defending Ukraine would be an obvious example — not merely talking about European sovereignty but demonstrating it, even in friendly dissent with the Americans. (And who knows, that might ultimately prompt a surprising shift in Washington’s Russia policy.) That, coupled with economic growth through real and far-reaching reforms, would be a start. After which Europe must tackle the most important task: a fundamental reversal of a migration policy rooted in cultural self-hatred that tolerates far too many newcomers who want a different society, who hold different values, and who do not respect our legal order. If all of this fails, American criticism will be vindicated by history. The excuses for why a European renewal is supposedly impossible or unnecessary are merely signs of weak leadership. The converse is also true: where there is political will, there is a way. And this way begins in Europe — with the spirit of renewal of a well-understood “Europe First” (what else?) — and leads to America. Europe needs America. America needs Europe. And perhaps both needed the deep crisis in the transatlantic relationship to recognize this with full clarity. As surprising as it may sound, at this very moment there is a real opportunity for a renaissance of a transatlantic community of shared interests. Precisely because the situation is so deadlocked. And precisely because pressure is rising on both sides of the Atlantic to do things differently. A trade war between Europe and America strengthens our shared adversaries. The opposite would be sensible: a New Deal between the EU and the U.S. Tariff-free trade as a stimulus for growth in the world’s largest and third-largest economies — and as the foundation for a shared policy of interests and, inevitably, a joint security policy of the free world. This is the historic opportunity that Friedrich Merz could now negotiate with Donald Trump. As Churchill said: “Never waste a good crisis!”

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić on Thursday rejected allegations linking him to so-called sniper safaris during the siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s, calling the claims “lies” aimed at portraying him as a “monster” and “cold-blooded killer.” “I have never killed anyone, never wounded anyone, nor done anything of the sort,” Vučić told reporters on the sidelines of the U.K.-Western Balkans regional business conference in Belgrade. Croatian investigative journalist Domagoj Margetić said Tuesday he had filed a formal complaint with prosecutors in Milan, alleging Vučić either took part in or helped facilitate “sniper tourism,” in which foreigners allegedly paid Bosnian Serb forces to be able to shoot civilians from positions overlooking the besieged city. In his letter to prosecutors, Margetić cites a 1993 video and purported wartime interviews, along with testimony from Bosnian officials as evidence that Vučić was a “war volunteer” in Sarajevo in 1992 and 1993, and a member of the New Sarajevo Chetnik Detachment of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS). He further alleges that Vučić spent several months stationed at a frontline position at Sarajevo’s Jewish cemetery. Responding to the allegations about the 1993 footage, which allegedly shows him holding a sniper rifle alongside other armed men at the cemetery, Vučić insisted: “I have never in my life held a sniper rifle. I didn’t even have the rifle you’re talking about, because that is a camera tripod.” Margetić’s accusations came as prosecutors in Milan opened an inquiry last week into alleged Italian nationals who may have taken part in the so-called sniper safaris, investigating potential charges of aggravated murder. Investigators are looking into claims that foreign visitors allegedly paid Bosnian Serb troops of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) — operating under the command of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić, who was convicted of genocide in 2016 — to transport them to hillside positions around Sarajevo, where they could fire at civilians for sport. More than 10,000 people were killed in Sarajevo between 1992 and 1996, many by relentless shelling and sniper fire, during what became the longest siege in modern European history, following Bosnia and Herzegovina’s declaration of independence from Yugoslavia. The siege saw Bosnian government forces defending the city against Bosnian Serb troops who encircled Sarajevo from the surrounding hills. The Italian probe, triggered by a complaint from independent journalist and writer Ezio Gavazzeni, aims to determine whether the long-rumored “human safaris” occurred and who may have enabled or participated in them. “We’re talking about wealthy people, with a reputation, entrepreneurs, who during the siege of Sarajevo paid to be able to kill defenseless civilians,” Gavazzeni told La Repubblica.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday signaled his intent to focus on an ongoing humanitarian crisis in Sudan, a priority for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, whom the president met with in Washington this week. Sudan has been racked by a 2 1/2–year-long civil war pitting the Sudanese Armed Forces against the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group, which international institutions have accused the United Arab Emirates of backing. It’s plunged tens of millions into a humanitarian crisis.. “Food, doctors, and everything else are desperately needed,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Arab Leaders from all over the World, in particular the highly respected Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, who has just left the United States, have asked me to use the power and influence of the Presidency to bring an immediate halt to what is taking place in Sudan.” In meetings since his Tuesday arrival in Washington, the Saudi crown prince has communicated to Trump his desire for increased American involvement in managing the crisis. Saudi Arabia would like to see the U.S. do more to urge the UAE to stop backing the Rapid Support Forces, an Arab official told POLITICO, to discuss sensitive diplomatic discussions. Prior to leaving office, former President Joe Biden accused the RSF of committing genocide in Sudan. The president mentioned the Saudi government’s interest in the issue in a speech Wednesday at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum, telling the audience that “his majesty would like me to do something very powerful having to do with Sudan.” “It was not on my charts to be involved in that,” he said. “I thought it was just something that was crazy and out of control. But I just see how important that is to you and to a lot of your friends in the room.” Trump’s overture could draw the ire of several key Republicans, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Steve Bannon, who argue the president needs to focus less on foreign policy and more on domestic issues, including affordability, in light of GOP losses in a series of off-cycle elections this month. In the weeks since, he’s hosted Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa at the White House and elevated Saudi Arabia to the status of “major non-NATO ally,” deepening defense cooperation with Riyadh. Felicia Schwartz contributed to this report.

DUBLIN — Ireland has a new left-wing president who has been sharply critical of Israel — and Catherine Connolly wants to push the limits of what is supposed to be a ceremonial head of state. At her inauguration ceremony at Dublin Castle, Connolly told an audience of government leaders past and present that her victory in the Oct. 24 election demonstrated Ireland wants a new political direction — one at odds, in many respects, with the country’s center-right government. She pledged to provide that counterweight in her coming seven-year term, using a position that can wield soft power on the world stage. “The president should be a unifying president — a steady hand, yes, but also a catalyst for change, reflecting our desire for a republic that lives up to its name,” Connolly told a ceremony featuring harpists and Uilleann pipers, military bands and a 21-cannon salute, as well as prayers from the leaders of every religious denomination. Connolly didn’t explicitly mention Israel or Gaza in what was, nonetheless, an unexpectedly political speech that twice called out the evils of “genocide” — barely disguised code for the independent socialist’s previous denunciations of Israel. The International Court of Justice is currently considering allegations of genocide against Israel over its conduct in Gaza, allegations adamantly rejected by that state. Overall, Connolly’s painstakingly scripted inaugural address sought to pose an immediate first test of the boundaries of an office that has no role in day-to-day government and is supposed to be above politics. ‘DIPLOMATIC SOLUTIONS’ Connolly delivered her remarks sitting beside Prime Minister Micheál Martin and Foreign Minister Simon Harris, who hold the real reins of power as the leaders of Ireland’s perennial middle-ground parties of government, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. She noted that her inauguration coincided with the 107th anniversary of the ending of the First World War. Ireland fought in that war as part of the U.K. but won de facto independence from Britain in 1922, remained neutral in World War II, has kept out of NATO, and maintains only a minuscule military focused on United Nations-approved missions. The country today hosts more than 80,000 Ukrainian refugees from Russia’s invasion, higher than the EU average, but supplies only non-lethal aid to Ukraine. Connolly described a modern Ireland committed to pacifism shaped by its devastating famine in the mid-19th century and its 1919-21 War of Independence from Britain. “Given our history, the normalization of war and genocide has never been and will never be acceptable to us,” she said, describing Ireland as “particularly well placed to lead and articulate alternative diplomatic solutions to conflict and war.” “Indeed our experience of colonization and resistance, of a catastrophic man-made famine and forced emigration, gives us a lived understanding of dispossession, hunger and war, and a mandate for Ireland to lead,” she said. Connolly offered other veiled criticisms of a coalition government that, since taking office earlier this year following a hard-fought 2024 election, has struggled to address a housing crisis, the country’s top political issue. Martin and Harris also have stepped back from climate-change commitments made during their previous, more left-leaning government in alliance with the Green Party. Connolly — whose candidacy was backed by the Greens and several other opposition parties of the left — said she had won “a powerful mandate” to promote the idea of an Ireland “where everyone is valued and diversity is cherished, where sustainable solutions are urgently implemented, and where a home is a fundamental human right.” Against expectations, Connolly delivered most of her nationally televised speech in English, not in Ireland’s comparatively little-used mother tongue of Irish. She had made her fluency in Ireland’s official first language a significant selling point in her presidential campaign. Mary McAuliffe, a University College Dublin historian, explained why. “A huge majority of people wouldn’t understand a whole speech in Irish,” McAuliffe said, “including I must say, myself.”

LONDON — Former U.K. Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn hosted a phone bank Sunday evening for Zohran Mamdani — and swiftly triggered a backlash from the Democratic New York mayoral contender’s political opponents. With New Yorkers heading to the polls Tuesday to choose the successor to incumbent Eric Adams, the left-wing British MP announced in a social media post that he was hitting the phones on behalf of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America campaign group to Get Out The Vote for Mamdani. “Let’s get Zohran over the finish line for a New York that’s affordable for all,” Corbyn — a fellow Arsenal Football Club fan — said as he posed with a North London 4 Zohran shirt. However, the intervention was criticized by Mamdani’s main opponent, the independent candidate Andrew Cuomo, who attacked Corbyn’s controversial tenure as Labour leader. After defying the odds to deprive former Conservative prime minister Theresa May of a majority in 2017, Corbyn took Labour to a calamitous defeat in the 2019 election. His stint at the top of Labour drew frequent criticism of the way the party dealt with allegations of anti-semitism in its own ranks, with Britain’s human rights watchdog finding that Labour under his leadership was “responsible for unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination.” Corbyn was booted from Labour by its current leader Keir Starmer over his response to that report, and now sits as an independent. “Having Jeremy Corbyn — someone whose party was found to have committed unlawful acts of discrimination against Jewish people under his leadership — phone-banking for Zohran Mamdani says everything you need to know,” Cuomo posted on X. U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon also highlighted Corbyn’s post, appending the message: “Foreign interference in a U.S. election?” There was strong criticism from Republicans when Labour Party activists campaigned for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in 2024. Corbyn is not the only European left-winger looking to help with — and learn from — Mamdani’s campaign. French co-Chair of The Left group in the European Parliament Manon Aubry visited New York last week to canvass alongside Mamdani supporters.