LONDON — The U.K.’s top military brass are not pulling their punches with a flurry of interventions in recent weeks, warning just how stark the threat from Russia is for Europe, well beyond Ukraine’s borders. British military chiefs have been hammering home just what is at stake as European leaders gather in Berlin for the latest round of talks, hoping to break the stalemate in peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. They have also been speaking out as the Ministry of Defence and U.K. Treasury hammer out the details of a landmark investment plan for defense. Here are 5 of the most striking warnings about the threats from Russia. 1. RUSSIA’S ‘EXPORT OF CHAOS’ WILL CONTINUE Intelligence chief Blaise Metreweli called out the acute threat posed by an “aggressive, expansionist, and revisionist” Russia in a speech on Monday.   “The export of chaos is a feature not a bug in the Russian approach to international engagement; and we should be ready for this to continue until Putin is forced to change his calculus,” the new boss of MI6 said.  That warning also comes with some fighting talk. “Putin should be in no doubt, our support is enduring. The pressure we apply on Ukraine’s behalf will be sustained,” Metreweli added. 2. BRITAIN WON’T RULE THE WAVES WITHOUT WORKING FOR IT Navy boss Gwyn Jenkins used a conference in London last week to draw attention to the rising threat of underwater attack. “The advantage that we have enjoyed in the Atlantic since the end of the Cold War, the Second World War, is at risk. We are holding on, but not by much,” Britain’s top sea lord said. In what appeared to be a message to spendthrift ministers, he warned: “There is no room for complacency. Our would-be opponents are investing billions. We have to step up or we will lose that advantage. We cannot let that happen.” 3. SPY GAMES EVERYWHERE U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey called reporters to Downing Street last month to condemn the “deeply dangerous” entry of the Russian spy ship — the Yantar — into U.K. waters.  Britain deployed a Royal Navy frigate and Royal Air Force P8 planes to monitor and track the vessel, Healey said. After detailing the incursion, the U.K. Cabinet minister described it as a “stark reminder” of the “new era of threat.”  “Our world is changing. It is less predictable, more dangerous,” he said.   4. NO WAY OUT Healey’s deputy, Al Carns, followed up with his own warning last week that Europe must be prepared for war on its doorstep.   Europe is not facing “wars of choice” anymore, but “wars of necessity” which will come with a high human cost, Carns said, citing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an example. He was speaking at the launch of the U.K.’s new British Military Intelligence Service, which will bring together units from the Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force in a bid to speed up information sharing. 5. EVERYONE’S GOT TO BE READY TO STEP UP U.K. Chief of Defence Staff Richard Knighton is set to call on Monday for the “whole nation” to step up as the Russian threat to NATO intensifies. “The war in Ukraine shows Putin’s willingness to target neighboring states, including their civilian populations, potentially with such novel and destructive weapons, threatens the whole of NATO, including the UK,” Knighton is due to say at the defense think tank RUSI on Monday evening, according to prepared remarks. “The situation is more dangerous than I have known during my career and the response requires more than simply strengthening our armed forces. A new era for defense doesn’t just mean our military and government stepping up — as we are — it means our whole nation stepping up,” he’ll also note.

Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz compared Russian President Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler in a speech Saturday evening, warning that the Kremlin leader’s ambitions won’t stop with Ukraine. “Just as the Sudetenland was not enough in 1938, Putin will not stop,” Merz said, referring to a part of Czechoslovakia that the Allies ceded to the Nazi leader with an agreement. Hitler continued his expansion into Europe after that. “If Ukraine falls, he won’t stop there,” Merz said, referring to Putin. German, British and French officials are set to meet in Berlin this weekend to discuss proposals to end the war in Ukraine. U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff is also expected to meet with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The talks are in preparation for a planned summit of leaders including Merz, Britain’s Keir Starmer, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Zelenskyy on Monday over stopping Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. A U.S.-backed 20-point peace plan is in the works, which includes territorial concessions on Ukraine’s part. Under one proposal being discussed, the Donbas region would be made into a free-trade zone were American companies can freely operate. Merz was speaking at a party conference of the Christian Social Union of Bavaria, which is closely aligned with his own party, the Christian Democrats.

President Donald Trump intends for the U.S. to keep a bigger military presence in the Western Hemisphere going forward to battle migration, drugs and the rise of adversarial powers in the region, according to his new National Security Strategy. The 33-page document is a rare formal explanation of Trump’s foreign policy worldview by his administration. Such strategies, which presidents typically release once each term, can help shape how parts of the U.S. government allocate budgets and set policy priorities. The Trump National Security Strategy, which the White House quietly released Thursday, has some brutal words for Europe, suggesting it is in civilizational decline, and pays relatively little attention to the Middle East and Africa. It has an unusually heavy focus on the Western Hemisphere that it casts as largely about protecting the U.S. homeland. It says “border security is the primary element of national security” and makes veiled references to China’s efforts to gain footholds in America’s backyard. “The United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity — a condition that allows us to assert ourselves confidently where and when we need to in the region,” the document states. “The terms of our alliances, and the terms upon which we provide any kind of aid, must be contingent on winding down adversarial outside influence — from control of military installations, ports, and key infrastructure to the purchase of strategic assets broadly defined.” The document describes such plans as part of a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. The latter is the notion set forth by President James Monroe in 1823 that the U.S. will not tolerate malign foreign interference in its own hemisphere. Trump’s paper, as well as a partner document known as the National Defense Strategy, have faced delays in part because of debates in the administration over elements related to China. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pushed for some softening of the language about Beijing, according to two people familiar with the matter who were granted anonymity to describe internal deliberations. Bessent is currently involved in sensitive U.S. trade talks with China, and Trump himself is wary of the delicate relations with Beijing. The new National Security Strategy says the U.S. has to make challenging choices in the global realm. “After the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country. Yet the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests,” the document states. In an introductory note to the strategy, Trump called it a “roadmap to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history, and the home of freedom on earth.” But Trump is mercurial by nature, so it’s hard to predict how closely or how long he will stick to the ideas laid out in the new strategy. A surprising global event could redirect his thinking as well, as it has done for recent presidents from George W. Bush to Joe Biden. Still, the document appears in line with many of the moves he’s taken in his second term, as well as the priorities of some of his aides. That includes deploying significantly more U.S. military prowess to the Western Hemisphere, taking numerous steps to reduce migration to America, pushing for a stronger industrial base in the U.S. and promoting “Western identity,” including in Europe. The strategy even nods to so-called traditional values at times linked to the Christian right, saying the administration wants “the restoration and reinvigoration of American spiritual and cultural health” and “an America that cherishes its past glories and its heroes.” It mentions the need to have “growing numbers of strong, traditional families that raise healthy children.” As POLITICO has reported before, the strategy spends an unusual amount of space on Latin America, the Caribbean and other U.S. neighbors. That’s a break with past administrations, who tended to prioritize other regions and other topics, such as taking on major powers like Russia and China or fighting terrorism. The Trump strategy suggests the president’s military buildup in the Western Hemisphere is not a temporary phenomenon. (That buildup, which has included controversial military strikes against boats allegedly carrying drugs, has been cast by the administration as a way to fight cartels. But the administration also hopes the buildup could help pressure Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro to step down.) The strategy also specifically calls for “a more suitable Coast Guard and Navy presence to control sea lanes, to thwart illegal and other unwanted migration, to reduce human and drug trafficking, and to control key transit routes in a crisis.” The strategy says the U.S. should enhance its relationships with governments in Latin America, including working with them to identify strategic resources — an apparent reference to materials such as rare earth minerals. It also declares that the U.S. will partner more with the private sector to promote “strategic acquisition and investment opportunities for American companies in the region.” Such business-related pledges, at least on a generic level, could please many Latin American governments who have long been frustrated by the lack of U.S. attention to the region. It’s unclear how such promises square with Trump’s insistence on imposing tariffs on America’s trade partners, however. The National Security Strategy spends a fair amount of time on China, though it often doesn’t mention Beijing directly. Many U.S. lawmakers — on a bipartisan basis — consider an increasingly assertive China the gravest long-term threat to America’s global power. But while the language the Trump strategy uses is tough, it is careful and far from inflammatory. The administration promises to “rebalance America’s economic relationship with China, prioritizing reciprocity and fairness to restore American economic independence.” But it also says “trade with China should be balanced and focused on non-sensitive factors” and even calls for “maintaining a genuinely mutually advantageous economic relationship with Beijing.” The strategy says the U.S. wants to prevent war in the Indo-Pacific — a nod to growing tensions in the region, including between China and U.S. allies such as Japan and the Philippines. “We will also maintain our longstanding declaratory policy on Taiwan, meaning that the United States does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait,” it states. That may come as a relief to Asia watchers who worry Trump will back away from U.S. support for Taiwan as it faces ongoing threats from China. The document states that “it is a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine,” and to mitigate the risk of Russian confrontation with other countries in Europe. But overall it pulls punches when it comes to Russia — there’s very little criticism of Moscow. Instead, it reserves some of its harshest remarks for U.S.-allied nations in Europe. In particular, the administration, in somewhat veiled terms, knocks European efforts to rein in far-right parties, calling such moves political censorship. “The Trump administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the [Ukraine] war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition,” the strategy states. The strategy also appears to suggest that migration will fundamentally change European identity to a degree that could hurt U.S. alliances. “Over the long term, it is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European,” it states. “As such, it is an open question whether they will view their place in the world, or their alliance with the United States, in the same way as those who signed the NATO charter.” Still, the document acknowledges Europe’s economic and other strengths, as well as how America’s partnership with much of the continent has helped the U.S. “Not only can we not afford to write Europe off — doing so would be self-defeating for what this strategy aims to achieve,” it says. “Our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory,” it says. Trump’s first-term National Security Strategy focused significantly on the U.S. competition with Russia and China, but the president frequently undercut it by trying to gain favor with the leaders of those nuclear powers. If this new strategy proves a better reflection of what Trump himself actually believes, it could help other parts of the U.S. government adjust, not to mention foreign governments. As Trump administration documents often do, the strategy devotes significant space to praising the commander-in-chief. It describes him as the “President of Peace” while favorably stating that he “uses unconventional diplomacy.” The strategy struggles at times to tamp down what seem like inconsistencies. It says the U.S. should have a high bar for foreign intervention, but it also says it wants to “prevent the emergence of dominant adversaries.” It also essentially dismisses the ambitions of many smaller countries. “The outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations,” the strategy states. The National Security Strategy is the first of several important defense and foreign policy papers the Trump administration is due to release. They include the National Defense Strategy, whose basic thrust is expected to be similar. Presidents’ early visions for what the National Security Strategy should mention have at times had to be discarded due to events. After the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush’s first-term strategy ended up focusing heavily on battling Islamist terrorism. Biden’s team spent much of its first year working on a strategy that had to be rewritten after Russia moved toward a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

THE WEST’S NEW ARMS RACE: SELLING PEACE TO BUY WAR Military spending is rising faster than at any time since the Cold War, but the retreat from diplomacy and foreign aid will come with a price. By TIM ROSS in London Illustrations by Nicolás Ortega for POLITICO In 1958, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan observed that “jaw, jaw is better than war, war.” Talking, he meant, is preferable to fighting.  Macmillan knew the realities of both diplomacy and military action: He was seriously wounded as a soldier in World War I, and as prime minister, he had to grapple with the nuclear threats of the Cold War, including most critically the Cuban missile crisis. John F. Kennedy, the U.S. president during that near-catastrophic episode of atomic brinkmanship, also understood the value of diplomatic channels, as well as the brutality of conflict: He severely injured his back serving in the U.S. Navy in 1943. Andrew Mitchell, a former Cabinet minister in the British government, worries that the wisdom of leaders like Kennedy and Macmillan gained from war has faded from memory just when it is most needed.  Advertisement “The world has forgotten the lessons of the first World War, when millions of people were slaughtered and our grandfathers’ generation said we can’t allow this to happen again,” he said. One school of academic theory holds that era-defining wars recur roughly every 85 years, as generations lose sight of their forebears’ hard-won experience. That would mean we should expect another one anytime now. And yet, as Mitchell sees it, even as evidence mounts that the world is headed in the wrong direction, governments have lost sight of the value of “jaw-jaw.” The erosion of diplomatic instinct is showing up not just in rhetoric but in budgets. The industrialized West is rapidly scaling back investment in soft power — slashing foreign aid and shrinking diplomatic networks — even as it diverts resources to defense.  U.S. aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest warship, makes its way into Oslo’s fjord in September. | Lise Åserud/NTB via AFP/Getty Images At no point since the end of the Cold War has military spending surged as fast as it did in 2024, when it rose 9.4 percent to reach the highest global total ever recorded by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. By contrast, a separate report from the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found a 9 percent drop in official development assistance that same year among the world’s richest donors. The OECD forecast cuts of at least another 9 percent and potentially as much as 17 percent this year.  “For the first time in nearly 30 years, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States all cut their ODA in 2024,” the OECD said in its study. “If they proceed with announced cuts in 2025, it will be the first time in history that all four have cut ODA simultaneously for two consecutive years.”  Diplomatic corps are also shrinking, with U.S. President Donald Trump setting the tone by slashing jobs in the U.S. State Department.  Advertisement Global figures are hard to come by, and anyway go out of date quickly; one of the most extensive surveys is based on data from 2023. But authorities in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the European Union’s headquarters are among those who have warned that their diplomatic staff face cuts.  Analysts fear that as industrialized economies turn their backs on aid and diplomacy to build up their armies, hostile and unreliable states like Russia, China and Turkey will step in to fill the gaps in these influence networks, turning once friendly nations in Africa and Asia against the West.  And that, they warn, risks making the world a far more dangerous place. If the geopolitical priorities of governments operate like a market, the trend is clear: Many leaders have decided it’s time to sell peace and buy war.  SELLING PEACE, BUYING WAR Military spending is climbing worldwide. The Chinese defense budget, second only to that of the U.S., grew 7 percent between 2023 and 2024, according to SIPRI. Russia’s military expenditure ballooned by 38 percent. Spurred in part by fears among European countries that Trump might abandon their alliance, NATO members agreed in June to a new target of spending 5 percent of gross domestic product on defense and security infrastructure by 2035. The U.S. president — cast in the role of “daddy” — was happy enough that his junior partners across the Atlantic would be paying their way.  In reality, the race to rearm pre-dates Trump’s return to the White House. The war in Ukraine made military buildup an urgent priority for anxious Northern and Eastern European states living in the shadow of President Vladimir Putin’s Russia. According to SIPRI, military spending in Europe rocketed 17 percent in 2024, reaching $693 billion — before Trump returned to office and demanded that NATO up its game. Since 2015, defense budgets in Europe have expanded by 83 percent. One argument for prioritizing defense over funding aid or diplomacy is that military muscle is a powerful deterrent against would-be attackers. As European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen put it when she announced her plan to rearm Europe in March: “This is the moment for peace through strength.” Some of von der Leyen’s critics argue that an arms race inevitably leads to war — but history does not bear that out, according to Greg Kennedy, professor of strategic foreign policy at King’s College London. “Arms don’t kill. Governments kill,” he said. “The problem is there are governments out there that are willing to use military power and to kill people to get their objective.”  Ideally a strong military would go hand in hand with so-called soft power in the form of robust diplomatic and foreign aid networks, Kennedy added. But if Europe has to choose, it should rebuild its depleted hard power first, he said. The risk to peace lies in how the West’s adversaries — like China — might respond to a new arms race.  Advertisement Few serious politicians in Europe, the U.K. or the U.S. dispute the need for military investment in today’s era of instability and conflict. The question, when government budgets are squeezed, is how to pay for it.  Here, again, Trump’s second term has set the tone. Within days of taking office, the U.S. president froze billions of dollars in foreign aid. And in February he announced he would be cutting 90 percent of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s contracts. The move — billed as part of Trump’s war on “woke” — devastated humanitarian nongovernmental organizations, many of which relied on American funding to carry out work in some of the poorest parts of the world. According to one estimate, Trump’s aid cuts alone could cause 14 million premature deaths over the next five years, one-third of them children. That’s a decision that Trump’s critics say won’t be forgotten in places like sub-Saharan Africa, even before cuts from other major donors like Germany and the U.K. take effect. Diplomatic corps are also shrinking, with U.S. President Donald Trump setting the tone by slashing jobs in the U.S. State Department. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images In London, British leader Keir Starmer and his team had prepared for the whirlwind of Trump’s return by devising a strategy aimed at appealing to the American leader’s self-interest, rather than values they weren’t sure he shared.  As Starmer got ready to visit the White House, he and his team came up with a plan to flatter Trump with the unprecedented honor of a second state visit to the U.K. Looking to head off a sharp break between the U.S. and Ukraine, Starmer also sought to show the U.K. was taking Trump seriously on the need for Europe (including Britain) to pay for its own defenses.  On the eve of his trip to Washington in February, Starmer announced he would raise defense spending — as Trump had demanded allies must — and that he would pay for it in part by cutting the U.K.’s budget for foreign aid from 0.5 percent of gross national income to 0.3 percent.  For a center-left leader like Starmer, whose Labour predecessors Gordon Brown and Tony Blair had championed the moral obligation to spend big on foreign development, it was a wrenching shift of gear.  Advertisement “That is not an announcement that I am happy to make,” he explained. “However, the realities of our dangerous new era mean that the defense and national security of our country must always come first.” The U.S. government welcomed Starmer’s move as “a strong step from an enduring partner.” But Starmer returned home to political revolt. His international aid minister Anneliese Dodds quit, warning Starmer his decision would “remove food and health care from desperate people — deeply harming the U.K.’s reputation.”  She lamented that Britain appeared to be “following in President Trump’s slipstream of cuts to USAID.”  EASY TARGETS  In the months that followed, other major European governments made similar calculations, some citing the U.K. as a sign that times had changed. For cash-poor governments in the era of Trumpian nationalism, foreign aid is an easy target for savings. The U.K. was once a world leader in foreign aid and a beacon for humanitarian agencies, enshrining in law its commitment to spend 0.7 percent of gross national income on ODA, according to Mitchell, the former Cabinet minister responsible for the policy. “But now Britain is being cited in Germany as, ‘Well, the Brits are cutting their development money, we can do the same.’”  In Sweden, the defense budget is due to rise by 18 percent between 2025 and 2026, in what the government hailed as a “historic” investment plan. “The prevailing security situation is more serious than it has been in several decades,” Sweden’s ministry of defense said, “and Russia constitutes a multi-dimensional threat.”  But Sweden’s international development cooperation budget, which was worth around €4.5 billion last year, will fall to €4 billion by 2026.  In debt-ridden France, plans were announced earlier this year to slash the ODA budget by around one-third, though its spending decisions have been derailed by a spiraling political crisis that has so far prevented it from passing a budget. Money for defense was due to rise dramatically, despite the overall squeeze on France’s public finances.  In Finland, which shares an 800-mile border with Putin’s Russia, the development budget also fell, while defense spending escaped cuts.  The country’s Development Minister Ville Tavio, from the far-right populist Finns Party, says the cuts provided a chance to rethink aid altogether. Instead of funding humanitarian programs, he wants to give private businesses opportunities to invest to create jobs in poorer countries. That, he believes, will help prevent young people from heading to Europe as illegal migrants.  Advertisement “If they don’t have jobs, the countries will become unstable, and the young people will radicalize. Some of them will start trying to get to Europe,” he said. “It’s a complete win-win if we can help the developing countries to industrialize and create those jobs they need.” Not all countries are cutting back. Ireland plans to increase its ODA budget, while Denmark has pledged to keep spending 0.7 percent of its gross national income on foreign aid even as it boosts investment in defense. But Ireland has enjoyed enviable economic growth in recent years and Denmark will pay for its spending priorities by raising the retirement age to 70. In any case, these are not giant economies that can sustain Europe’s reputation as a soft power superpower on their own.  STAFF CUTS The retreat from foreign aid is only part of a broader withdrawal from diplomacy itself. Some wealthy Western nations have trimmed their diplomatic corps, even closing embassies and bureaus.  Again, Trump’s America provides the most dramatic example. In July, the U.S. State Department fired more than 1,300 employees, among them foreign service officers and civil servants. In the eyes of European officials watching from afar, Trump’s administration just doesn’t seem to care about nurturing established relations with the rest of the world.  According to the American Foreign Service Association’s ambassador tracker, 85 out of 195 American ambassador roles were vacant as of Oct. 23. Part of this reflects confirmation delays in the U.S. Senate, but nine months in office, the administration had not even nominated candidates for more than 60 of the empty posts.  The result is a system stretched to the breaking point, with some of the most senior officials doing more than one job. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, is still doubling up as Trump’s national security adviser (and he’s also been tapped to head the national archives). With key posts left open, Trump has turned to loyalists. Instead of drawing on America’s once-deep pool of diplomatic expertise, the president sent his friend Steve Witkoff, a lawyer and real estate investor, to negotiate personally with Putin and to act as his envoy to the Middle East.  In Brussels, EU officials have been aghast at Witkoff’s lack of understanding of the complexities of the Russia-Ukraine war. One senior European official who requested anonymity to speak candidly about diplomatic matters said they have zero confidence that Witkoff can even relay messages between Moscow and Washington reliably and accurately.  That’s partly why European leaders are so keen to speak directly to Trump, as often and with as many of them present as they can, the senior European official said. And while Washington’s diplomatic corps is hollowed out in plain sight, other governments in the West follow Trump’s lead, only more quietly. Advertisement British diplomats face staff cuts of 15 percent to 25 percent. The Netherlands is reducing its foreign missions budget by 10 percent (while boosting defense) and plans to close at least five embassies and consulates, with more likely to follow.  Even the EU’s flagship foreign department — the European External Action Service, led by the former Prime Minister of Estonia Kaja Kallas, a Russia hawk — is reducing its network of overseas offices. The changes, which POLITICO revealed in May, are expected to result in 10 EU delegations being downsized and 100 to 150 local staff losing their jobs.  “European diplomacy is taking a back seat to priorities such as border control and defense, which are getting increased budget allocations,” one EU official said. The person insisted the EU is not “cutting diplomacy” — but “the resources are going elsewhere.” Privately, diplomats and other officials in Europe confess they are deeply concerned by the trend of reducing diplomatic capacity while military budgets soar.  “We should all be worried about this,” one said.  JAW-JAW OR WAR-WAR? Mitchell, the former British Cabinet minister, warned that the accelerating shift from aid to arms risks ending in catastrophe. “At a time when you really need the international system … you’ve got the massive resurgence of narrow nationalism, in a way that some people argue you haven’t really seen since before 1914,” he said.  Mitchell, who was the U.K.’s international development minister until his Conservative Party lost power last year, said cutting aid to pay for defense was “a terrible, terrible mistake.” He argued that soft power is much cheaper, and often more effective, than hard power on its own. “Development is so often the other side of the coin to defense,” Mitchell said. It helps prevent wars, end fighting and rebuild nations afterward.  At no point since the end of the Cold War has military spending surged as fast as it did in 2024. | Federico Gambarini/picture alliance via Getty Images Many ambassadors, officials, diplomats and analysts interviewed for this article agree. The pragmatic purpose of diplomatic networks and development programs is to build alliances that can be relied on in times of trouble. “Any soldier will tell you that responding to international crises or international threats, isn’t just about military responses,” said Kim Darroch, who served as British ambassador to the U.S. and as the U.K.’s national security adviser. “It’s about diplomacy as well, and it’s about having an integrated strategy that takes in both your international strategy and your military response, as needed.” Hadja Lahbib, the European commissioner responsible for the EU’s vast humanitarian aid program, argues it’s a “totally” false economy to cut aid to finance military budgets. “We have now 300 million people depending on humanitarian aid. We have more and more war,” she told POLITICO.  The whole multilateral aid system is “shaking” as a result of political attacks and funding cuts, she said. The danger is that if it fails, it will trigger fresh instability and mass migration. “The link is quite vicious but if we are not helping people where they are, they are going to move — it’s obvious — to find a way to survive,” Lahbib said. “Desperate people are more [willing] to be violent because they just want to save their lives, to save their family.” Advertisement Countries that cut their outreach programs also face paying a political price for the long term. When a wealthy government closes its embassy or reduces aid to a country needing help, that relationship suffers, potentially permanently, according to Cyprien Fabre, a policy specialist who studies peace and instability at the OECD.  “Countries remember who stayed and who left,” he said.  Vacating the field clears space for rivals to come in. Turkey increased its diplomatic presence in Africa from 12 embassies in 2002 to 44 in 2022, Fabre said. Russia and China are also taking advantage as Europe retreats from the continent. “The global bellicose narrative sees big guns and big red buttons as the only features of power,” Fabre said.  Politicians tend to see the “soft” in “soft power,” he added. “You realize it’s not soft when you lose it.”  Nicholas Vinocur contributed to this report.

The problem of inequality has become so pressing that it needs coordinated global action to address it, a group of over 500 economists and scientists said on Friday. The group, which includes former Treasury Secretary and Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen along with French economist Thomas Piketty and Nobel Prize winner Daren Acemoglu, called in an open letter for the creation of a body akin to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to coordinate action against what it saw as disastrous effects on modern society. “We are profoundly concerned, as they are, that extreme concentrations of wealth translate into undemocratic concentrations of power, unravelling trust in our societies and polarising our politics,” read the letter, referring to the findings of a G20 research committee led by noted American economist Joseph Stiglitz. Just last week, shareholders of electric vehicle company Tesla voted to award the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, a pay package potentially worth $1 trillion, the largest in history. Musk, also the owner of social media platform X, is already the richest man in the world. The IPCC has spearheaded the collection and dissemination of the scientific consensus on climate change over the past four decades and acted as a powerful force to push green policy forward. The economists said a new “International Panel on Inequality” would play a similar role, gathering evidence and pushing governments to act to tackle wealth gaps.  The proposal was first contained in a recent report on inequality authored by a G20 research committee led by Stiglitz, who focused on inequality in his time as chief economist at the World Bank in the 1990s. The report found that between 2000 and 2024, the richest 1 percent of humanity had accumulated 41 percent of all new wealth — versus the 1 percent that had gone to the bottom half of the global population. That’s equal to an average gain of $1.3 million for the top 1 percent, versus $585 for people in the poorest half. There have been marked political consequences of these large differences between the rich and the poor, with the report finding that countries with high levels of inequality were “seven times more likely to experience democratic decline than more equal countries.”  Stiglitz said in an interview with POLITICO that the growing gap between rich and poor is evidence that the past four decades of middle-of-the-road governance on both sides of the Atlantic has failed. Populists across the West, including U.S. President Donald Trump, had seized the moment, playing on the grievances that failure had stoked, he said.  “I do think that centrist politicians on both sides of the Atlantic bought into the neoliberal fantasy that if you had trade liberalization, financial liberalization, privatization, you would have more growth, and trickle-down economics would make sure that everyone would benefit,” said Stiglitz.  He praised the recent victory of the Democratic Socialist mayor-elect of New York, Zohran Mamdani, who he said was addressing people’s everyday concerns, in contrast to politicians of both the center-left and center-right. Mamdani, who last week surged to victory after defeating both Democratic rival Andrew Cuomo and Republican contender Curtis Sliwa, ran a strikingly effective media campaign centered on the city’s spiraling cost of living. His platform included promises to provide free bus travel, state-owned supermarkets and rent-controlled apartments.   Stiglitz, who described himself as “very market friendly,” nonetheless said he thought the left-wing mayor had opened up space for debate. Zohran Mamdani, who last week surged to victory after defeating both Democratic rival Andrew Cuomo and Republican contender Curtis Sliwa, ran a strikingly effective media campaign centered on the city’s spiraling cost of living. | Sarah Yenesel/EPA “He’s saying things that are important to people: things like housing, food, transport, health care,” said Stiglitz. “He’s just ticking down the list of things that make for the necessities of a decent life, and he’s saying things aren’t working right.”  Stiglitz won his Nobel Prize in 2001 for work on information asymmetries in markets, and served as a chief economist at the World Bank and as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers during former President Bill Clinton’s administration, where he had a famously rocky relationship with Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. With its embrace of globalization and the Internet revolution, Clinton’s team was hugely influential in drawing the parameters for the modern world economy. The influential economist said that tackling inequality wasn’t just a moral choice, but a political necessity. He added that the yawning gap between the rich and poor was undermining the U.S. in its economic and technological competition with China. “[The U.S.] won’t win if we are a divided society, a polarized society,” said Stiglitz, echoing rhetoric of the last Cold War. “The greatest weakness in the U.S. today is this division.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday ordered top officials to come up with proposals for the potential resumption of nuclear testing for the first time since the end of the Cold War more than three decades ago. Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump instructed the Pentagon to “immediately” start testing nuclear weapons “on an equal basis” with nuclear testing programs in other nations. Putin, speaking at Russia’s Security Council, told the country’s foreign and defense ministers, its special services and the relevant civilian agencies to study the matter and “submit coordinated proposals on the possible commencement of work to prepare for nuclear weapons testing.” Defense Minister Andrei Belousov told Putin at the meeting that it would be “appropriate to immediately begin preparations for full-scale nuclear tests.” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov later clarified that “the president did not give the order to begin preparations for the test” but merely ordered a feasibility study. Russia announced last week that it had successfully tested a nuclear-powered torpedo, dubbed Poseidon, that was capable of damaging entire coastal regions as well as a new cruise missile named the Burevestnik, prompting Trump to respond. The U.S. today launched an intercontinental ballistic missile, Minuteman III, in a routine test. The Cold War was characterized by an intense nuclear arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union as the superpowers competed for superiority by stockpiling and developing nuclear weapons. It ended in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the signing of nuclear treaties such as START, which aimed to reduce and control nuclear arsenals. The Soviet Union conducted its last test in 1990 and the U.S. in 1992. Defense Minister Andrei Belousov told Putin at the meeting that it would be “appropriate to immediately begin preparations for full-scale nuclear tests.” | Contributor/Getty Images A report this year by the SIPRI think tank warned that the global stockpile of nuclear weapons is increasing, with all nine nuclear-armed states — the U.S., U.K., Russia, France, China, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea — upgrading existing weapons and adding new versions to their stockpiles.

The White House is exuding confidence heading into Wednesday’s Supreme Court hearing that the justices will uphold President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff powers. But just in case, aides have a plan B. Aides have spent weeks strategizing how to reconstitute the president’s global tariff regime if the court rules that he exceeded his authority. They’re ready to fall back on a patchwork of other trade statutes to keep pressure on U.S. trading partners and preserve billions in tariff revenue, according to six current and former White House officials and others familiar with the administration’s thinking, some of whom were granted anonymity to share details of private conversations. “They’re aware there are a number of different statutes they can use to recoup the tariff authority,” said Everett Eissenstat, former deputy director of the White House’s National Economic Council during Trump’s first term. “There’s a lot of tools there that they could go to to make up that tariff revenue.” The contingency planning underscores how much is at stake for Trump, who has used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a 1977 law designed for national emergencies, to impose tariffs on nearly every U.S. trading partner — the foundation of his second-term economic agenda. The justices will weigh whether the law gives the president broad power to impose economic restrictions — or whether Trump has stretched it beyond what Congress intended. If the court curtails that power, it could upend not only the White House’s “America First” trade strategy but also the global negotiations Trump has leveraged it to shape. “This is all about foreign policy. This isn’t 1789 where you can clearly delineate between trade policy, economic policy, national security policy and defense policy. These things are all completely interconnected,” said Alex Gray, who served as National Security Council chief of staff and deputy assistant to the president during the first Trump administration. “To diminish the tools he has to do that is really dangerous.” Behind the scenes, trade and legal advisers have modeled what a partial loss might look like — where the court upholds the use of the 1977 law in some circumstances but not others — and what other legal means might be available to achieve similar ends. However, those alternatives are slower, narrower and, in some cases, similarly vulnerable to legal challenge, leaving even White House allies to acknowledge the administration’s tariff strategy is on shakier ground than it is willing to publicly concede. Even a partial loss at the Supreme Court would make it much harder for the president to use tariffs as an all-purpose tool for extracting concessions on a number of issues, from muscling foreign companies to make investments in the U.S. to pressuring countries into reaching peace agreements. “There’s no other legal authority that will work as quickly or give the president the flexibility he wanted,” said one supporter of Trump’s tariff policies, who was part of a group that filed an amicus brief in support of his tariffs. “They seem very confident that they’re going to win. I don’t see why they’re confident at all. Two different courts that have ruled extremely harshly on this.” Still, White House aides are telegraphing confidence, convinced the justices won’t strip Trump of his favorite negotiating tool, and certain that even if they do, he has plenty of backup plans. “Frankly, there’s a little bit of bravado, like, they’re not going to knock these down,” one person close to the White House said. A White House official, granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the administration sees it as “a pretty clear case.” “We’re using a law that Congress passed, in which they gave the executive branch the authority to use tariffs to address national emergencies,” the official said. Aides concede that other tariff authorities are not a “one-for-one replacement” for the emergency law, though they confirmed they are pursuing them. In fact, the White House has already laid some of the policy groundwork under those authorities, such as the 1970s-vintage Section 301, which the U.S. used against China in Trump’s first term, or the Cold War-era Section 232, which allows tariffs on national-security grounds. The administration has launched more than a dozen 232 investigations into whether the import of goods like lumber, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and critical minerals from other countries impairs national security. Since January, Trump has used that authority to impose new tariffs on copper, aluminum, steel and autos. It has also opened a 301 investigation into Brazil’s trade practices, including digital services, ethanol tariffs and intellectual property protection. It’s a model officials say could be replicated against other countries if the court curtails IEEPA — and could be used to pressure countries into reaffirming the trade deals that they’ve already negotiated with the United States, or to accept the rates that Trump has unilaterally assigned them. But those tools come with challenges: Section 301 investigations can take months to complete, slowing Trump’s ability to impose tariffs unilaterally or tie them to unrelated goals like ending the war between Russia and Ukraine or stem the flow of fentanyl across the U.S. border. Section 232 offers broad discretion to impose tariffs on national-security grounds, but because the levies are sector-based, they are typically applied across a product category, limiting Trump’s ability to pressure individual countries. And imposing new duties on global industries like semiconductors or pharmaceuticals, as Trump has threatened, could upend recent agreements the administration has reached with trading partners, especially China, which negotiated a trade truce last week. “This detente may have weakened the president’s resolve to go forward with the 232s. We’re worse off than we were,” a second person close to the administration said. The U.S. has already promised to delay fees on Chinese vessels arriving at U.S. ports following the conclusion of a Section 301 investigation on China’s shipbuilding practices as a result of the Thursday meeting between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The U.S. also agreed to delay an investigation into China’s adherence to its trade deal from Trump’s first term. Section 122, meanwhile, allows only short-term tariffs of up to 15 percent and for no more than 150 days unless Congress acts to extend them — a narrow clause meant to address trade deficit emergencies. The authority could potentially serve as a bridge between an adverse court ruling and new duties Trump wants to put in place using other authorities. Then there’s Section 338 — a rarely used provision that’s been on the books for nearly a century. In theory, it could let Trump swiftly impose tariffs of up to 50 percent on any country, if he can explain how they are engaging in “unreasonable” or “discriminatory” actions that hurt U.S. commerce. Section 338 does not require a formal investigation before a president can impose tariffs, but would likely face similar legal challenges. Major trading partners are betting that Trump will find a way to reimpose tariffs, somehow. Two European diplomats, granted anonymity to discuss trade strategy, said the countries believe that the Supreme Court won’t strike down the global tariffs and, if it does, it won’t do much to shift the dynamic. “Our working assumption is that the court rulings won’t change anything,” a European official said, adding that they are still hoping the law is overturned. Some are convinced the only way to address the tariffs permanently is for the president to appeal to Congress, arguing that only lawmakers can decide how much unilateral power any White House should permanently wield over global commerce. That would be an uphill battle. At least four Republicans are openly opposed to the global tariffs — bucking Trump in a series of symbolic votes last week. And it’s unclear whether there’s appetite for a vote on Trump’s tariffs in the House, which has been shielded from weighing in on the tariffs until the end of January, after Republican leadership blocked votes on Trump’s national emergencies. “At the end of the day, all this comes back to Congress,” Eissenstat said. “Maybe Congress will step up its role post hearing, post ruling. We’ll see.”

NARVA, Estonia — Right on the Russian border, Europe’s first commercial-scale rare-earth magnet factory is starting to supply automotive and green tech customers from a forgotten corner of Estonia. The project represents an act of defiance against Russian aggression. It’s a bid to counter China’s chokehold over critical minerals that is Beijing’s trump card in its escalating trade war with the United States. And it’s a vote of optimism regarding European industry, its backers say. “The future of Europe’s competitiveness is here,” Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal said at the opening of the factory last month. On the day of the ceremony, Russian military jets intruded into Estonian airspace. The first phase of the new factory, owned by Neo Performance Materials, will be capable of producing magnets for 1 million electric vehicles and 1,000 generators for the wind industry annually. These magnets make electric systems more efficient, and demand is picking up rapidly.  European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen even brought a magnet made in Narva to the G7 summit in Canada in June, where she handed it to Prime Minister Mark Carney, in recognition of Neo’s Canadian roots.  As they are made with rare earth elements — metals whose extraction and refining is dominated by China — there was no commercial-scale production in Europe before Neo set its sights on this city right on the Russian border.   Just east of the factory, a fortress sits on each bank of the Narva River, which forms the EU and NATO’s border with Russia.   But it’s not just European industry that is counting on the plant run by Neo. Estonia and the rusting province around Narva also see it as vital to their futures.  MAKING A COMEBACK  Estonia’s third-largest city feels forgotten, peripheral and decidedly unfashionable. The local textile industry collapsed so long ago that locals barely remember it. The colorful Hanseatic hipster capital Tallinn feels distant, with its Michelin-starred restaurants, pricey craft beer and tech startup scene.   “Narva used to be a quiet place at the end of Europe. Young people were moving away,” said Aivar Virunen, the plant’s production manager and Neo’s first employee in Narva. A lifelong resident and former machine engineer in the oil shale sector, he’s excited about the promise of a revival.  Ida-Virumaa, the province Narva is a part of, is the old industrial heartland of Estonia. The region, home to approximately 130,000 people, is centered on the shale oil industry. Or used to be.  The local tar sands offered Estonia de facto energy independence from Russia — in contrast to neighboring Latvia and Lithuania — at the cost of relying on a polluting source of energy and heating.   By 2035, Tallinn wants to have phased out shale oil. For over a decade the industry has been in slow decline as the sprawling plants built during Soviet occupation times have rarely undergone renovation, let alone expansion.   For Narva, the shale exit means that thousands of people in the mining and energy production sectors are set to lose their jobs.  “Of my colleagues, 30 percent come from the oil shale industry,” Virunen explained. “But also, others are coming from all over Estonia,” he said, adding 14 nationalities are already represented on the factory floor.  MOVING FAST  The digital metamorphosis that has occurred in the Estonian government over recent decades is now being implemented in Narva with Neo’s factory. What started with a so-called Tiger’s Leap by the state to connect every school in the country to the internet as early as 1996, led — along with the birth of Skype, Wise and Bolt — to a highly skilled workforce.  “We evaluated lots of places,” Neo CEO Rahim Suleman told POLITICO. The company went with Narva when it “looked at the kind of digital capabilities and the speed upon we could do this,” he explained, referring to the quick permitting of the project.  On a budget of €100 million, Neo received €17 million from the EU’s Just Transition Fund, meant to entice investments to deindustrializing regions that need to move jobs away from fossil fuel industries. In Estonia only Ida-Virumaa qualifies for the subsidies, to the tune of €340 million.  Neo’s factory — only the first phase of a potentially much larger footprint in Narva — will support 300 jobs, with the potential to grow to about 1,000. It will source its supplies of neodymium, a rare earth used in permanent magnets, from Australia. The permitting process was so fast that new EU-wide rules on industrial permitting — the Net-Zero Industry Act and the Critical Raw Materials Act — didn’t influence it.   Maive Rute, herself Estonian, one of the European Commission’s most senior civil servants on industrial policy, said the Narva facility “proves that Europe can not only invent but also produce. It can produce sustainably, and it can lead” the way in the green transition.  BORDER RISK  What could go wrong?  Narva and its environs, with their large Russian-speaking population, could be next in Moscow’s sights after Crimea, Donbass and the rest of Ukraine. Should Russian President Vladimir Putin order his troops into Estonia, the town would be one of their first targets.  But Neo isn’t worried about that, Suleman said. “We’re not a geopolitical company. We have another facility nearby, so we were already exposed longer to Estonia’s way of doing business,” he told POLITICO.  “Let’s state the obvious: It’s a NATO country. We’re confident in the alliance’s response and we hope for the existing war to end as soon as possible.”  As for Estonia, hosting a factory that is unique outside Asia is precisely the type of deeper integration the country continuously seeks with the EU and NATO. It was occupied by Moscow for almost six decades during the Cold War, subjected to indiscriminate deportations and russification. Acutely aware of Russia’s imperialist tendencies, Tallinn has always viewed any policy through a lens of security and deterrence — even in the case of factories.  Becoming a cog in Europe’s push to electrify the car industry and grow the wind power sector is very much in line with that approach — almost as much as adopting the euro or swapping the Russian power grid for the European one.  “With this investment, Estonia is now at the very heart of Europe’s rare earth magnet manufacturing,” Michal said. “This plant proves that it’s possible for international capital, European support and Estonian know-how to come together.”  Graphic by Lucia Mackenzie. This story has been updated.

BERLIN — Chancellor Friedrich Merz suspects the Kremlin is behind most of the drones spotted in German airspace in recent days that forced the temporary closure of Munich Airport. “We suspect that a significant portion of it is probably controlled from Russia. But we are investigating the matter, and regardless of where it comes from, it is a serious threat to our security,” Merz said on public television late Sunday. Drones were sighted around Munich Airport in recent days, forcing authorities to close runways and cancel flights. The cancellations stranded thousands of travelers, many of whom had attended Oktoberfest. The sightings came amid a wave of drone-related disruptions plaguing Europe’s airspace. European leaders have blamed the Kremlin for violations over Danish, Estonian, Norwegian, Romanian and Polish airspace in separate incidents in recent weeks. Merz compared the recent violations to incursions into European airspace during the Cold War, but those incidents, he added, did not occur as “frequently as we have been experiencing in recent weeks.” “These are attempts at espionage,” Merz said. “They are also attempts to unsettle the public. We know that we have to do something about this. We will do so, but we will do so calmly and with a sense of proportion.” European leaders last week debated a proposal by the European Commission to erect a so-called “drone wall” along the bloc’s eastern flank. Big member states, including Germany and France, however, are reluctant to cede such defense-related matters to the EU, preferring to keep nation-states and NATO in charge. “We are facing a threat on a scale that we have not seen in recent years,” Merz said. “We are working intensively, including within the European Union and NATO, to reach decisions on how to counter this threat.” Merz said there’s no evidence that any of the drones spotted thus far have carried weapons. A minority of the incidents, he added, involved people in Germany who were privately building drones in a kind of copycat crime. A Russian foreign ministry spokesperson ridiculed Merz’s assertion that Moscow is likely behind most of the drone sightings in Germany and beyond. “Berlin still hasn’t figured out what happened with the streams [Nord Stream pipelines] and still doesn’t know who blew them up,” the spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, said Monday. “It looks like they won’t get around to dealing with drones until the next century.” Zoya Sheftalovich contributed to reporting.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz warned Friday that Europe must grow stronger to defend against an “axis” of autocratic nations targeting liberal democracy more aggressively than at any time since the Cold War. Speaking at an event marking the 35th anniversary of Germany’s reunification along with French President Emmanuel Macron, both leaders warned that Europe must gird itself to endure massive political and economic shifts around the globe. “The centers of power in the world are shifting to an extent not seen since the end of the Cold War,” Merz said. “An axis of autocratic states that challenges the liberal order around the world is directly challenging Western democracies. That is why we must regain the ability to defend our freedom.” Merz said that “the radiance of what we in the West call liberal democracy is noticeably diminishing,” adding: “It is no longer a given that the world will orient itself towards us, that it will follow our values of liberal democracy.” “New alliances of autocracies are forming against us and attacking liberal democracy as a way of life,” Merz said. Recent global turmoil has struck Germany with particular force. Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine and the erosion of the transatlantic alliance have compelled the country’s leaders to invest massively in rebuilding the relatively feeble German military. The energy shock that accompanied the Ukraine invasion and U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff wars have both hit German industry particularly hard. But Macron too, speaking after Merz, echoed parts of the chancellor’s message, arguing that Europe is undergoing a “degeneration of democracy” due to attacks on various fronts — including from within. “We are also threatened from the outside. But we should not be naive. On the inside we are turning on ourselves; we doubt our own democracy,” he said. “We see everywhere that something is happening to our democratic fabric. Democratic debate is turning into a debate of hatred.” Much of that degeneration is due to online discourse on platforms controlled by U.S. and Chinese firms, said Macron. “We’ve been guilty … of handing over our public democratic space to social networks owned by big American entrepreneurs and Chinese firms whose interests are not at all the survival and the good functioning of our democracy,” said Macron. Both leaders said Europe must build up its economic competitiveness to have the muscle to face the challenges of a rapidly changing world. “The global economic order is being rewritten, it is being rebuilt,” Merz said. “Egoism is becoming more visible again. And perhaps that is why we have become economically weaker and why the social promises we have made to each other are so much harder to fulfill today than they used to be.” Merz called on Europe to “oppose a new wave of protectionism in the world” by forging ahead with new trade rules and seeking new markets. “Europe must refocus on its economic competitiveness,” he said.