while the determination of Ukraine to fight is unquestionable, the emotional belief in the west that this will overcome the enormous social and economic challenges the country faces in an extended attritional war with Russia is wildly misplaced.
A full 180 degree change in diplomatic course by Europe would require an acceptance that the war against Russia was unwinnable, and that Russia’s underlying concerns – namely Ukrainian neutrality – would finally have to be accepted as a political reality.
Better for EU leaders to accept this now although, of course, they won’t.
Caught between a rock and a hard place, European leaders continue to deny the obvious realities of the dire situation in Ukraine, which will only worsen over time. Yet I see no evidence of any willingness to change course, despite the obvious political hazard they face and the increasingly grim forecast for Europe and for Ukraine should they continue to push an unwinnable war.
The war in Ukraine is now entirely dependent on the ability of European states to pay for it at a cost of at least $50bn per year, on the basis of Ukraine’s latest budget estimate for the 2026 fiscal year. Ukraine itself is bankrupt and has no access to other sources of external capital, beyond that provided by the governments sponsoring the ongoing war.
That then brings the conversation back to the expropriation of $140bn in assets currently frozen in Belgium which the Commission would like to use for a reconstruction loan. The term ‘reconstruction loan’ is itself disingenuous, on the basis that any expropriated Russian assets would not be used for reconstruction, but rather to fund the Ukrainian war effort. Indeed. Chancellor Merz of Germany recently suggested that the fund could allow Ukraine to keep fighting for another three years.
The most likely scenario, in the terrible eventuality that war in Ukraine did continue for another three years is that the Russian armed forces would almost certainly swallow up the whole of the Donbass region – comprising Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. This – Ukraine’s departure from the Donbas – appears to be the basis of President Putin’s conditions for ending the war now, together with a Ukrainian declaration of neutrality and giving up any NATO aspirations. More likely, the Russian Armed forces might also capture additional swathes of land in Zaporizhia and Kherson oblasts, and also in Dnipropetrovsk, where they have made recent incursions.
So, there is a strong likelihood, at the currently slow pace of the war effort in which Russia claims small pieces of land on a weekly basis, that three years from now Ukraine would have to settle for a peace that was even more disadvantageous to it than that which is available now, having lost more land, together with potentially hundreds of thousands of troops killed or injured.
Logically, European policymakers would be able to look into the future to see this grim predicament with clear eyes and encourage Zelensky to settle for peace now.
But European policy is driven by two key considerations. Firstly, an emotional belief that an extended war might so weaken Russia that President Putin was forced to settle on unfavourable terms. The idea of a strategic defeat of Russia – which is often spoken by European politicians – however, doesn’t bear serious scrutiny.
Russia doesn’t face the same considerable social and financial challenges that Ukraine faces. Its population is much larger and a wider conscription of men into the Armed forces has not been needed – Russia can recruit sufficient new soldiers to fight and, indeed, has increased the size of its army since 2022. Ukraine continues to resort to forced mobilisation of men over the age of 25, often using extreme tactics that involve busifying young men against their will from the streets.
Critically, Russia could likely continue to prosecute the war on the current slow tempo for an extended period of time without the need for a wider mobilisation of young men, which may prove politically unpopular for President Putin domestically. Yet, the longer the war continues, Ukraine will come under increasing pressure, including from western allies, to deepen its mobilisation to capture young men below the age of 25 to shore up its heavily depleted armed forces on the front line.
There has been considerable resistance to this so far within Ukraine. Mobilising young men above the age of 22 would prove unpopular for President Zelensky but it would also worsen Ukraine’s already catastrophic demographic challenge: 40% of the working age population has already been lost, either through migration or through death on the front line and that number will continue to go south, the longer the war carries on.
Russia’s financial position is considerably stronger than Ukraine’s. It has very low levels of debt at around 15% of GDP and maintains a healthy current account surplus, despite a narrowing of the balance in the second quarter of 2025. Even if Europe expropriates its frozen assets, Russia still has a generous and growing stock of foreign exchange reserves to draw upon, which recently topped $700bn for the first time.
Russia’s military industrial complex continues to outperform western suppliers in the production of military equipment and munitions. In the currently unlikely event that Russia started to fall into the red in terms of its trade – what commentators in the west refer to as destroying Russia’s war economy – it would still have considerable scope to borrow from non-western lenders, given the strength of its links with the developing world, aided by the emergence of BRICS.
Ukraine is functionally bankrupt because it is unable to borrow from western capital markets, on account of its decision to pause all debt payments. With debt expected to reach 110% in 2025, even before consideration of any loan backed by frozen Russian assets, it depends entirely on handouts from the west. Ukraine’s trade balance has continued to worsen throughout the war, reinforcing its dependence on capital injections from the west to keep its foreign exchange reserves in the black.
So while the determination of Ukraine to fight is unquestionable, the emotional belief in the west that this will overcome the enormous social and economic challenges the country faces in an extended attritional war with Russia is wildly misplaced.
So, let’s look at the rational explanation for Europe’s continued willingness to prolong the fight in Ukraine. The uncomfortable truth is that Europe’s political leaders have boxed themselves into this position because of a hard boiled determination not to concede to Russia’s demands in any peace negotiations. Indeed, there is a steadfast and immovable objection to talking to Russia at all, which has been growing since 2014.
However, across much of Europe, the political arithmetic is turning against the pro-war establishment with nationalist, anti-war parties gaining ground in Central Europe, Germany, France, Britain and even in Poland. And despite positive overtures made by President Trump towards negotiation with President Putin, Trumpophobia provides another brake on the European political establishment shifting its position.
So, changing course now and entering into direct negotiations with Russia would have potentially catastrophic consequences, politically, for European leaders, which they must surely be aware of. A full 180 degree change in diplomatic course by Europe would require an acceptance that the war against Russia was unwinnable, and that Russia’s underlying concerns – namely Ukrainian neutrality – would finally have to be accepted as a political reality.
On this basis, European politicians would face the prospect of explaining to their increasingly sceptical voters that their strategy of defeating Russia had failed, having spent four years of war saying at all times that it would eventually succeed. And that would lead potentially to internationalist governments falling across Europe starting in two years when Poland and France will again go to the polls, and in 2029 when the British and German governments will face the voters.
There are deeper issues too. An end of war would accelerate the process of admitting Ukraine into the European Union with potentially disastrous consequences for the whole financial basis of Europe. The European Commission will face the prospect of accepting that a two-tier Europe is inevitable, admitting Ukraine as a member without the financial benefits received by existing member states; for probably understandable reasons, this would cause widespread resentment within Ukraine itself, having sacrificed so much blood to become European, precipitating widespread internal dissent and possibly conflict in a disgruntled country with an army of almost one million. Alternatively, the European Commission would need to redraw its budget and face huge resistance from existing Member States, who would lose billions of Euros each year in subsidies to Ukraine.
Caught between hoping for a strategic defeat of Russia which any rational observe can see is unlikely, and accepting the failure of their policy, causing a widespread loss of power and huge economic and political turmoil, Europe’s leaders are choosing to keep calm and carry on. If they had any sense, the likes of Von der Leyen, Merz, Starmer or Macron would change tack and pin their hopes on explaining away their failure before the political tide in Europe evicts them all from power. But I see no signs of them having the political acumen to do that. So we will continue to sit and wait, while storm clouds grow ever darker over Europe.
Letter to Ft.com : It almost feels impolite to point out some simple facts regarding your story “Westinghouse and US government strike $80bn nuclear reactor deal”. We are celebrating what Donald Trump hails as its “great friendship” between US and Japan, in addition to the election of our first female prime minister, and an $80bn nuclear reactor deal — struck by Washington and funded by Tokyo — all under the bright banner of what appears to be a new era for our two countries.
Yet the simple fact remains, whether we like it or not, that Japan is one of the most seismically active countries in the world, which makes operating nuclear power plants far riskier there than in the US.
The major nuclear players in both countries — Westinghouse and Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) — have faced bankruptcy or financial collapse. All publicly available, reliable data shows that solar power is significantly cheaper than new nuclear energy. Both our countries’ leaders have issued similarly nationalistic statements on green energy — President Trump even signed executive orders on “Unleashing American Energy”, implicitly pointing to a common foe, namely China.
Warren Buffett once wrote that “more money has been stolen with the point of a pen than at the point of a gun”. These nuclear power plant projects will consume billions of dollars over the coming decades — long after today’s leaders have left office. Future generations are being made the “collateral” for decisions taken today.
The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) has approved EDF’s plans for the decommissioning of its Hinkley Point B nuclear power station, despite wide-ranging concerns raised by organisations, including the Environment Agency, which regulates the nuclear sector.
The National Press Club of Australia lists 81 corporate sponsors on its website.
Twenty-one of them (listed below) are either part of the global arms industry or actively working on its behalf.
Ten are multinational weapons manufacturers or military services corporations. They include the world’s two biggest weapons makers, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon (RTX); British giant BAE Systems; France’s largest weapons-maker, Thales; and US weapons corporation Leidos – all five are in the global top 20. BAE Systems, which is the largest contractor to the Department of Defence, received $2 billion from Australian taxpayers last year.
In 2023, these five corporations alone were responsible for almost a quarter – 23.8 per cent (US$150.4 billion (A$231.5 billion)) – of total weapons sales (US$632 billion (A$973 billion)) made by the world’s top 100 weapons companies that year.
Last year, UN experts named Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, RTX (Raytheon) and eight other multinationals in a statement, warning them that they risked being found in violation of international law for their continued supply of weapons, parts, components and ammunition to Israeli forces. The experts called on the corporations to immediately end weapons transfers to Israel. None has done so.
Another of the Club’s sponsors – Thales – is being investigated by four countries for widespread criminal activity in three separate corruption probes. In a fourth, long-running corruption case in South Africa, the country’s former president, Jacob Zuma, is now in court, alongside Thales, being tried on 16 charges of racketeering, fraud, corruption and money laundering in connection with arms deals his government did with Thales.
Global expert Andrew Feinstein has documented his extensive research into the arms industry. He told Undue Influence that wherever the arms trade operates, it “increases corruption and undermines democracy, good governance, transparency, and the rule of law, while, ironically, making us less safe”.
Undue Influence asked the Press Club’s CEO, Maurice Reilly, what written policies or guidelines were in place that addressed the suitability and selection of corporations proposing to become Press Club sponsors.
Mr Reilly responded: “The board are informed monthly about…proposals and have the right to refuse any application.”
Wherever the arms trade operates it “increases corruption and undermines democracy, good governance, transparency, and the rule of law, while, ironically, making us less safe”. – Andrew Feinstein, author of Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade
National Press Club board
The National Press Club, established by journalists in 1963, is an iconic Australian institution. It is best known for its weekly luncheon addresses, televised on the ABC, covering issues of national importance, after which the speaker is questioned by journalists.
The Club’s board has 10 directors led by Tom Connell, political host and reporter at Sky News, who was elected president in February following the resignation of the ABC’s Laura Tingle.
The other board members are: vice president Misha Schubert (CEO, Super Members Council of Australia; formerly with The Age and The Australian); treasurer Greg Jennett (ABC); Steve Lewis (senior adviser, SEC Newgate; formerly with NewsCorp and the Financial Review); Jane Norman (ABC); Anna Henderson (SBS); Julie Hare (Financial Review); Andrew Probyn (Nine Network); Gemma Daley (Media & Government Affairs, Ai Group); and Corrie McLeod, the sole representative from an independent media outlet – InnovationAus.
At least two board members have jobs that involve lobbying.
Long-term board member Steve Lewis works as a senior adviser for lobbying firm SEC Newgate, which itself is a Press Club sponsor and also has as clients the Press Club’s two largest sponsors: Westpac and Telstra. SEC Newgate has previously acted for several Press Club sponsors, including Serco (one of the arms industry multinationals listed below), BHP, Macquarie Bank, Tattarang, and Spirits & Cocktails Australia Inc.
Gemma Daley joined the board a year ago, having started with Ai Group as its head of media and government affairs four months earlier. Ms Daley had worked for Nationals’ leader David Littleproud, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and former treasurer Joe Hockey and, before that, for media outlets the Financial Review and Bloomberg. Ai Group has a significant defence focus and promotes itself as “the peak national representative body for the Australian defence industry”. The group has established a Defence Council and in 2017 appointed a former assistant secretary of the Defence Department, Kate Louis, to lead it. The co-chairs of its Defence Council are senior arms industry executives. One of them, Paul Chase, is CEO of Leidos Australia, a Press Club sponsor.
Undue Influence asked Ms Daley for comment on several aspects related to her position on the board, including whether she has had to declare any conflicts of interest to date. She responded: “Thanks for the inquiry. I have forwarded this through to Maurice Reilly. Have a good day.”
Given the potential for conflicts of interest to arise, as happens on any board, Undue Influence had already asked the Press Club CEO what written policies or guidelines existed to ensure the appropriate management of conflicts of interest by board members and staff.
Mr Reilly responded:
The Club has a directors’ conflict register which is updated when required. Each meeting, board members and management are asked if they have conflicts of interest with the meeting agenda. We have a standard corporate practice that where a director has a conflict on an agenda item they excuse themselves from the meeting and take no [part] in any discussion or any decision.
Undue Influence is neither alleging nor implying inappropriate or illegal behaviour by anyone named in this article. Our objective, as always, is to shine a light on, and scrutinise, the weapons industry’s opaque engagement in public life in Australia.
While Mr Reilly declined to disclose the Club’s sponsorship arrangements with Westpac and Telstra, citing “commercial in confidence” reasons, The Sydney Morning Herald reported earlier this year that Westpac paid $3 million in 2015 to replace NAB as the Press Club’s principal sponsor.
The SMH article, “Westpac centre stage at post-budget bash”, on Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ National Press Club address in the Great Hall of Parliament House in late March, added:
[Westpac] … gets more than its money’s worth in terms of access. New-ish chief executive Anthony Miller got the most coveted seat in the house, between Chalmers and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese… Finance Minister Katy Gallagher and Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles were also on the front tables.
Westpac occupied prime real estate in the Great Hall, with guests on its tables including Treasury Secretary Steven Kennedy, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet boss Glyn Davis, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, Housing Minister Clare O’Neil and Labor national secretary and campaign mastermind Paul Erickson…
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland was on the Telstra table.
Mr Reilly told Undue Influence that all the other corporate sponsors pay $25,000 per year, with a few paying extra as partners in the Club’s journalism awards.
The 21 arms industry and related sponsors therefore contribute an annual $525,000 to the Press Club’s coffers. This is 23% of the $2.26 million revenue it earns from “membership, sponsorship and broadcasting”, the Club’s largest revenue line, as shown in its 2024 financial statement.
“The National Press Club of Australia proudly partners with organisations that share our commitment to quality, independent journalism,” says the Club’s website.
“Aligning your brand with the National Press Club is an opportunity for unparalleled engagement in the Australian political debate and announces that your organisation is part of the business culture in Canberra.”
In response to Undue Influence’s questions about the Club’s cancellation of a planned address by the internationally acclaimed journalist Chris Hedges (covered below), Mr Reilly stated that: “For the avoidance of doubt [sponsors] do not receive any rights to speak at the club [nor are they] able to influence decisions on speakers.”
Sponsors may not be granted a right to speak, but they are sometimes invited to speak, with their status as sponsors not always disclosed to audiences.
When the Club’s second largest sponsor, Telstra, spoke on 10 September, both Club president Tom Connell and Telstra CEO Vicki Brady noted the corporation’s longstanding sponsorship.
Sponsors may not be granted a right to speak, but they are sometimes invited to speak, with their status as sponsors not always disclosed to audiences.
When the Club’s second largest sponsor, Telstra, spoke on 10 September, both Club president Tom Connell and Telstra CEO Vicki Brady noted the corporation’s longstanding sponsorship.
Compare this with two addresses given by $25,000 corporate sponsors – Kurt Campbell (former US deputy secretary of state, now co-founder and chair of The Asia Group) who gave an address on 7 September; and Mike Johnson, CEO of Australian Industry and Defence Network (AIDN), who gave an address on 15 October. Neither the Press Club nor the speakers disclosed the companies’ sponsorship of the Press Club.
While both speakers are considered experts in their field, the sponsorships should have been disclosed as a matter of public accountability.
“Priority seating and brand positioning”
On its website, the Club also promotes additional benefits of corporate sponsorship, including, “Brand association with inclusion on our prestigious ‘Corporate Partners’ board and recognition on the National Press Club of Australia website”.
The Club also promises corporate sponsors that they will receive “priority seating and brand positioning” at its weekly luncheon addresses, as the following examples show. (As principal sponsor, the logo of Westpac appears on every table and on the podium.)
The local subsidiary of British giant BAE Systems has benefited handsomely from its modest $25,000 annual sponsorship. It had the best table – behind the microphone from which journalists asked questions – at then defence minister Peter Dutton’s address in November 2021. The BAE logo appeared on the national public broadcaster – which has strict rules against advertising – eight times during the half-hour question period following Mr Dutton’s address, giving BAE Systems extended ‘brand positioning’ with its target market: senior politicians, defence public servants and military officers.
On 28 November 2023, Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy spoke about AUKUS. The logos of Press Club sponsors DXC Technology and Deloitte were also well-situated for the camera during question time. Both companies are significant contractors to the Defence Department. Deloitte also works for the weapons industry, including BAE Systems.
Cancelling Chris Hedges
The Press Club recently drew significant attention to itself after it cancelled a planned address by the Pulitzer-prize-winning American journalist, and former long-term war correspondent, Chris Hedges. Mr Hedges reported for The New York Times for 15 years, from 1990-2005, including long stints as its bureau chief in the Middle East and in the Balkans. He was to have appeared at the Press Club on 20 October.
However, in late September, Press Club CEO Maurice Reilly cancelled Mr Hedges’ appearance. This occurred two weeks after the Club was sent details of what Mr Hedges proposed to cover, including a link to an article he had entitled The Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists. In that article, Mr Hedges wrote:
Israel has murdered 245 journalists in Gaza by one count and more than 273 by another… No war I covered comes close to these numbers of dead. Since Oct 7 [2023], Israel has killed more journalists “than the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including the conflicts in Cambodia and Laos), the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined”.
Mr Hedges also intended to cover what he has described as the “barrage of Israeli lies amplified and given credibility by the Western press”, examples of which he provides in the above article.
Following a scathing post from Mr Hedges about the Press Club’s cancellation of his address, and significant public disquiet, the Press Club issued a statement denying it had come under external pressure to cancel his address. Inexplicably, the Press Club also denied it had confirmed the Hedges address. This claim was easily checked and soon reported to be false. Undue Influence has seen the emails showing that the Press Club had confirmed the address.
National Press Club funded by companies profiting from genocide
In July, Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, issued a report explaining how the corporate sector had become complicit with the State of Israel in conducting the genocide.
Her report also noted that arms-making multinationals depend on legal, auditing and consulting firms to facilitate export and import transactions to supply Israel with weapons.
Numerous members of the public posted their concerns on the Press Club’s Facebook page. Here are three examples: [on original]
Four of the world’s largest accounting, audit and consulting firms – all of which have arms industry corporations as clients – are sponsors of the Press Club: KPMG, Accenture, Deloitte and EY. Until recently, PwC counted among them.
EY (Ernst & Young) has been Lockheed Martin’s auditor since 1994. EY is also one of two auditors used by Thales, and has been for 22 years. Deloitte has been BAE Systems’ auditor since 2018. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) – a Press Club sponsor until 2024 – has been Raytheon’s auditor since 1947.
Lockheed Martin’s supply to Israel of F-16 and F-35 fighter jets and C-130 Hercules transport planes, and their parts and components, along with Hellfire missiles and other munitions, has directly facilitated Israel’s genocide.
Raytheon’s (RTX) supply of guided missiles, bombs, and other advanced weaponry and defence systems, like the Iron Dome interceptors, also directly supports Israel military capability.
In England, BAE Systems builds the rear fuselage of every F-35, with the horizontal and vertical tails and other crucial components manufactured in its UK and Australian facilities. It also supplies the Israeli military with munitions, missile launching kits and armoured vehicles, while BAE technologies are integrated into Israel’s drones and warships.
Thales supplies Israel’s military with vital components, including drone transponders. Australian Zomi Frankcom and her World Central Kitchen colleagues were murdered by an Israeli Hermes drone, which contain Thales’ transponders. Yet, echoing Australia, France claims its military exports to Israel are non-lethal.
National Press Club sponsors from military-industrial complex
# Rankings compiled by SIPRI at December 2023 (published December 2024)
^ NOTE ON US COMPANIES: The Defence Department procures weapons/military goods directly from Lockheed Martin, RTX (Raytheon) and other US corporations via the US Government’s Foreign Military Sales program. The value of FMS contracts is not included in the table.
Note on the use of the word ‘genocide’
Three independent experts appointed by the UN’s Human Rights Commission – the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel – issued a report in September that concluded Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. One of the Commissioners – Chris Sidoti – speaking at the Press Club recently, said the Commission’s report will remain the most authoritative statement on this issue until the world’s highest authority, the International Court of Justice, makes its ruling.
Nuclear weapons have made the world safe for hypocrisy and unsafe in every other respect. Astride the nonsense that is nuclear apartheid – the forced separation of the states that are permitted to have nuclear weapons and those that do not – sits that rumpled, crumpled creature called the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). For decades, the nuclear club has dangled an unfulfilled promise to eventually disarm their arsenals by encouraging non-nuclear weapons states to pursue peaceful uses of the atom. Preference, instead, has been given to enlarging inventories and developing ever more ingenious and idiotic ways of turning humans, and animal life, into ash and offal.
Little wonder that some countries have sought admission to the club via the backdoor, avoiding the priestly strictures and promises of the NPT. The Democratic Republic of North Korea is merely the unabashed example there while Israel remains even less reputable for its coyness in possessing weapons it regards as both indispensable and officially “absent”. Other countries, such as Iran, have been lectured, and bombed into compliance. Again, more hypocrisy.
On such rocky terrain, the US President’s instruction to his newly named Department of War to resume nuclear testing is almost prosaic, if characteristically inaccurate. On social media, Donald Trump declared that, “Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately.” Strictly speaking, North Korea remains the black sheep of an otherwise unprincipled flock to consistently test nuclear weapons since the late 1990s, while 187 states have added signatures to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
Other streaky details included the assertion that the US had a nuclear weapons inventory larger than that of any other state, something “accomplished” through “a complete update and renovation of existing weapons” during Trump’s first term.
The announcement did cause a titter among the nuclear chatting classes. “For both technical and political reasons,” remarked Heather Williams, Director of the Project on Nuclear Issuesand a Senior Fellow in the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “the United States is unlikely to return to nuclear explosive testing any time soon.” She did concede that Trump’s post pointed “to increasing nuclear competition between the United States, Russia, and China.” Whatever the bluster, and however many bipartisan calls to do so, the current administration had been “slow to seriously invest in this nuclear competition.”
This line of reasoning is telling. The issue for Williams is not to decry the resumption of a type of testing – the explosive, high-yield variety – less than to chide the President for not taking a serious interest in joining the great game of nuclear modernisation with other powers. “Nuclear testing is not the best step forward in that competition, but it should raise alarm within the administration about the state of the United States’ nuclear enterprise and the urgency of investing in nuclear modernization.” And there you have it.
Rebeccah L. Heinrichs of the Hudson Institute does some speculative gardening around the announcement with the same sentiment. Trump might have meant, she writes in the Wall Street Journal, “conducting flight tests of delivery systems.” Maybe he was referring to explosive yield-producing tests. And those naughty Russians and Chinese were simply not behaving in terms of keeping their nuclear arsenals splendidly inert. With the familiar nuclear hawkishness that occupies the world of stubborn lunacy, Heinrichs is unequivocal about what the administration should do: “Whatever Mr. Trump means by ‘testing,’ the US should work urgently to improve and adapt its nuclear deterrent. To do this, Mr. Trump should let the last arms-control treaty between the US and Russia – the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New Start – expire in February.” This, it seems, counts for good sense.
Other commentators tended to fall into the literal school of Trump interpretation. There is no room for allegory, symbolism or fleeting suggestion there. Tilman Ruff, affiliated with the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, among other groups, offers his concerns. “If Trump is referring to the resumption of explosive nuclear testing, this would be an extremely unfortunate, regrettable step by the United States,” he fears, writing in that blandest of fora, The Conversation. “It would almost inevitably be followed by tit-for-tat reciprocal announcements by other nuclear-armed states, particularly Russia and China, and cement an accelerating arms race that puts us all in great jeopardy.”
Ruff points out the obvious dangers of such a resumption: the risks of global radioactive fallout; the risk, even if the tests were conducted underground, of “the possible release and venting of radioactive materials, as well as the potential leakage into groundwater.” Gloomy stuff indeed.
Others did the inevitable and, in Trump’s case, inconsequential thing of trying to correct America’s highest magistrate by appealing to hard boiled facts. “Nothing [in the announcement] is correct,” grumbled Tom Nichols from The Atlantic. “Trump did not create a larger stockpile by ‘updating’ in his first term. No nation except North Korea has tested nuclear weapons since the 1990s.”
At The New York Times, W. J. Hennigan took some relish in pointing out that the province of nuclear testing lay, not with the Pentagon, but the Energy Department. But then came the jitters. “The president’s ambiguity is worrisome not only because America’s public can’t know what he means, but because America’s adversaries don’t.”
The problem goes deeper than that, and Hennigan admits that the breaking of the moratorium on nuclear testing is always something peaking around the corner. The US, for instance, is constructing the means of conducting “subcritical nuclear tests, or underground experiments that test nuclear components of a war head but stop short of creating a nuclear chain reaction, and therefore, a full weapons test.”
Even if the Trump announcement was to be taken seriously – and there is much to suggest that it be confined to a moment of loose thinking in cerebral twilight – dangers of any resumption of full testing will only marginally endanger the planet more than matters stand. The nuclear club, with its Armageddon fanciers and Doomsday flirters, remains snobbishly determined to keep the world in permanent danger. An arms race is already taking place, however euphemised it might be.
New tests of the U.S. nuclear weapons system ordered up by President Donald Trump will not include nuclear explosions, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Sunday.
It was the first clarity from the Trump administration since the president took to social media last week to say he had “instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis.”
“I think the tests we’re talking about right now are system tests,” Wright said in an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Briefing.” “These are not nuclear explosions. These are what we call noncritical explosions.”
Wright, whose agency is responsible for testing, added that the planned testing involves “all the other parts of a nuclear weapon to make sure they deliver the appropriate geometry and they set up the nuclear explosion.”
The confusion over Trump’s intention started minutes before he held a critical meeting in South Korea with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump took to his Truth Social platform and appeared to suggest he was preparing to discard a decades-old U.S. prohibition on testing the nation’s nuclear weapons.
Later that day, as he made his way back to Washington, Trump was coy on whether he really meant to say he was ordering the resumption of explosive testing of nuclear weapons — something only North Korea has undertaken this century — or calling for the testing of U.S. systems that could deliver a nuclear weapon, which is far more routine.
He remained opaque on Friday when asked by reporters about whether he intended to resume underground nuclear detonation tests.
“You’ll find out very soon,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday, as he headed to Florida for a weekend stay.
The U.S. military regularly tests its missiles that are capable of delivering a nuclear warhead, but it has not detonated the weapons since 1992. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which the U.S. signed but did not ratify, has been observed since its adoption by all countries possessing nuclear weapons, North Korea being the only exception.
Russia responded to Trump’s nuclear testing comments by underscoring that it did not test its nuclear weapons and has abided by a global ban on nuclear testing.
The Kremlin warned though, that if the U.S. resumes testing its weapons, Russia will as well — an intensification that would restart Cold War-era tensions.
US War Department officials don’t know the identities of the 61 people who have been extra-judicially executed in US military strikes on boats in the waters near Venezuela and in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, POLITICO reported on Thursday, citing House Democrats who attended a classified briefing on the campaign.
“[The department officials] said that they do not need to positively identify individuals on these vessels to do the strikes, they just need to prove a connection to smuggling,” said Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA). “When we tried to get more information, we did not get satisfactory answers.”
While the Trump administration has cited overdose deaths in the US related to fentanyl to justify the bombing campaign, lawmakers were told in the briefing that the boats that have been targeted were allegedly smuggling cocaine, though the Pentagon has not provided evidence to back up its claims about what the vessels were carrying.
“They argued that cocaine is a facilitating drug of fentanyl, but that was not a satisfactory answer for most of us,” Jacobs said.
The briefing on Thursday came after the Pentagon shut out Democrats from another briefing it held with Republicans a day earlier, which left Democratic senators fuming. Democrats who attended Thursday’s briefing said Pentagon lawyers were pulled from the meeting at the last minute.
“Am I leaving satisfied? Absolutely not. And the last word that I gave to the admiral was, ‘I hope you recognize the constitutional peril that you are in and the peril you are putting our troops in,’” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) told reporters after the briefing, according to CNN.
Jacobs said that, based on what she was told, even if Congress authorized the bombing campaign, it would still be illegal. “[T]here’s nothing that we heard in there that changes my assessment that this is completely illegal, that it is unlawful and even if Congress authorized it, it would still be illegal because there are extrajudicial killings where we have no evidence,” she said.
Criticism of the US bombing campaign has also come from Republicans, most prominently from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). “No one said their name, no one said what evidence, no one said whether they’re armed, and we’ve had no evidence presented,” Paul said this week of the people who have been targeted. “They summarily execute people without presenting evidence to the public … so it’s wrong.”
Paul has joined Senate Democrats in introducing a War Powers Resolution aimed at preventing the Trump administration from starting a war with Venezuela amid threats of US strikes on the country aimed at ousting President Nicolas Maduro and a major US military buildup in the region. A vote on the bill is expected to happen next week.
The UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, told the General Assembly on 28 October that 63 countries, including key western and Arab states, have fueled or were complicit in “Israel’s genocidal machinery” in Gaza.
Speaking remotely from the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation in Cape Town, Albanese presented her 24-page report, ‘Gaza Genocide: A Collective Crime,’ which she said documents how states armed, financed, and politically protected Tel Aviv as Gaza’s population was “bombed, starved, and erased” for over two years.
Her findings place the US at the center of Israel’s war economy, accounting for two-thirds of its weapons imports and providing diplomatic cover through seven UN Security Council vetoes.
The report cited Germany, Britain, and a number of other European powers for continuing arms transfers “even as evidence of genocide mounted,” and condemned the EU for sanctioning Russia over the war in Ukraine while remaining Israel’s top trading partner.
Albanese accused global powers of having “harmed, founded, and shielded Israel’s militarized apartheid,” allowing its settler-colonial project “to metastasize into genocide – the ultimate crime against the indigenous people of Palestine.”
She said the genocide was enabled through “diplomatic protection in international fora meant to preserve peace,” military cooperation that “fed the genocidal machinery,” and the “unchallenged weaponization of aid.”
The report also identified complicity among Arab states, including the UAE, Egypt, Bahrain, and Morocco, which normalized ties with Tel Aviv.
Egypt, she noted, maintained “significant security and economic relations with Israel, including energy cooperation and the closing of the Rafah crossing,” tightening the siege on Gaza’s last humanitarian route.
Albanese warned that the international system now stands “on a knife-edge between the collapse of the rule of law and hope for renewal,” urging states to suspend all military and trade agreements with Tel Aviv and build “a living framework of rights and dignity, not for the few, but for the many.”
Her presentation provoked an outburst from Israel’s envoy Danny Danon, who called her a “wicked witch.”
Frascnesca fired back, saying, “If the worst thing you can accuse me of is witchcraft, I’ll take it. But if I had the power to make spells, I would use it to stop your crimes once and for all and to ensure those responsible end up behind bars.”
Human rights experts described the report as the UN’s most damning indictment yet of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Albanese had previously been sanctioned by the US in July, after releasing a report that exposed western corporations profiting from Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The 27-page report, ‘From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide,’ named over 60 companies, including Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar, Microsoft, Palantir, and Hyundai, for aiding and profiting from Israel’s settlements and military operations, and called for their prosecution at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Albanese of waging a “campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel,” announcing the sanctions as part of Washington’s effort to counter what he called “lawfare.”
The move drew sharp condemnation from UN officials and rights groups, who warned that it threatened global accountability mechanisms.
“It’s incoherent, it’s illogical and when it comes to nuclear weapons, we simply cannot afford the kind of zig-zagging policies that we’re seeing from Trump on so many other topics.”
The resumption of nuclear weapons testing by the United States will undermine national security, arms control advocates told Newsweek.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, denounced President Trump’s directive for the Department of War to immediately restart nuclear weapons testing for the first time in more than 30 years as reckless and unclear.
“Somebody needs to talk to an adult at the White House and find out what the heck he’s talking about,” Kimball told Newsweek early Thursday. “I can’t discern his grumblings beyond what you can. If he’s talking about resuming weapons test explosions for the first time since 1992, he is misinformed about what that’s for and whether it’s necessary.”
Kimball said Trump’s announcement on Truth Social on Wednesday was likely to spark strong opposition in Nevada, where the last nuclear detonations in the U.S. occurred underground, as well as potential ramifications abroad.
“It’s not militarily, technically or politically necessary,” Kimball continued. “It would lead to a chain reaction of nuclear tests by other countries, including Russia, probably North Korea, maybe China, and it would undermine U.S. security because the United States has conducted more nuclear tests — 1,030 — than any other country.”
Trump’s proposal will also face “tremendous opposition” from Congress, Kimball said, including legislators in Nevada like U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, who indicated late Wednesday she intends to introduce legislation to “put a stop” to Trump’s proposed shift.
The resumption of nuclear testing at the former site in Nevada would take up to 36 months and cost up to “hundreds of millions,” Kimball said.
“Many hundreds of millions of dollars,” he said. “If you can imagine, you’ve got to drill a vertical shaft, you have to bring in cranes, equipment, drillers, personnel. You have to make sure that containment is right and you have to get federal reviews, etcetera, etcetera. Congress would have an opportunity at some point to block this.”
North Korea is the lone country to have conducted a nuclear test explosion this century and the United States signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1996, Kimball said.
“Most of all, we need to be asking why,” Kimball added. “What is the purpose? How does this advance our interests? This would take us back to the worst days of the Cold War where the U.S. and the Soviet Union were conducting tit-for-tat atmospheric nuclear test explosions to simply show the other side that we’ve got big bombs too.”
Kimball said Trump’s announcement represented an “incoherence and inconsistency” regarding nuclear weapons, citing prior recent calls to denuclearize.
“And now he’s talking about responding with our own nuclear tests,” he explained. “It’s incoherent, it’s illogical and when it comes to nuclear weapons, we simply cannot afford the kind of zig-zagging policies that we’re seeing from Trump on so many other topics.”
A message seeking additional details from the White House on Trump’s directive was not immediately returned on Thursday.
Alicia Sanders-Zakre, policy and research coordinator for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), characterized Trump’s announcement as “incoherent, untrue and alarming,” alleging his misrepresented the size of arsenals in the U.S., Russia and China.
Trump has also mistakenly claimed that China and Russia are currently testing nuclear weapons and directed the incorrect agency — the Department of War — to resume testing rather than the Department of Energy, which oversees the nation’s nuclear warheads, Sanders-Zakre said.
“The fact that Trump referenced Russian and Chinese activities and the Department of War could be interpreted as signaling that he was referring to testing nuclear-capable missiles, which all three countries do regularly test,” she told Newsweek.
The most recent nuclear test in the United States took place at the Nevada National Security Site, where nearly 1,000 detonations have occurred. Other U.S.-led detonations have happened in New Mexico, the Marshall Islands and Kiribati in the central Pacific, where joint testing occurred with the United Kingdom, Sanders-Zakre said.
In 2005, the National Cancer Institute estimated that 22,000 cancers resulting in 11,000 U.S. deaths would be caused in the aftermath of the Nevada nuclear tests, Sanders-Zakre added.
“Nuclear detonations in the Pacific obliterated entire atolls, and left others uninhabitable to this day,” she wrote in an email. “It was due in large part to the nationwide and global opposition to nuclear test detonations – and their clear devastating impacts for people and the environment – that nuclear test detonations were prohibited by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996.”
Any move by the United States to restart nuclear testing will evoke “widespread national and global condemnation,” Sanders-Zakre said.
The United States is slated to spend $95 billion on its nuclear arsenal per year over the next decade and ICAN estimated global nuclear spending last year at $100 billion, she said.
“Any additional funds wasted on weapons of mass destruction is diverting resources that could address real security needs,” Sanders-Zakre wrote in an email.
A senior Russian lawmaker, meanwhile, also warned Thursday that any move by the United States to resume nuclear testing could trigger global instability.
Dr. Emma Belcher, a nuclear proliferation expert at Ploughshares, a nonprofit that aims to reduce nuclear threats, described Trump’s directive as “reckless, needless and dangerous” for national and world security.
“While the details of this policy shift are unclear, including whether Trump is referring to missile testing or explosive nuclear tests, it threatens to upend relations between nuclear-armed states and push the world deeper into a new arms race,” Belcher told Newsweek in a statement. “If the U.S. breaks its 30-year moratorium on nuclear tests, China and Russia will likely return to wide-scale explosive testing. On the international level, this will heighten the risks of great power competition and increase the likelihood that strategic tensions lead to nuclear catastrophe.”
Hegseth might as well have told Congress that: “I have no idea who I’m murdering on the high seas… and I don’t care.”
Pete Hegseth’s War Dept held a briefing Wednesday for Congress on their criminal, unconstitutional bombings of small, unarmed boats in the Caribbean and Pacific killing 61 unidentified US murder victims.
Pete’s Murder Unincorporated not divulge the names of the dead, saying that was unnecessary since they were obviously drug smugglers bringing in fentanyl to kill thousands of unsuspecting US drug users. And in Hegseth’s newly renamed Department of War, suspected drug smugglers aren’t interdicted, boats searched and actual drug smugglers arrested. They and their boats are simply blown to bits.
Morally centered Democrats arrived at the hearing poised to object to Hegseth’s murderous lawlessness… but they were turned away. Only high seas murder supporting Republicans were allowed in. Democratic Senator Mark Warner blasted this show hearing:
“It’s not optional (to allow in Democrats). It’s a freakin’ duty. When an administration decides it can pick and choose which elected representatives get the understanding of their legal argument of why this is needed for military force and only chooses a particular party, it ignores all the checks and balances.”
Next day Pete pivoted and allowed Dems in… but barred War Department attorneys who would have to offer legal justification for their boss’ ongoing mass murder on the high seas. Likely reason? If they had an iota of moral, ethical and professional decency they’d say… “Absolutely none.”
Since 2017, US diplomats have tried unsuccessfully to devise ways to help Saudi Arabia enrich uranium — a dangerous nuclear activity that can bring a state to the very brink of making bombs. Next month, they get another chance: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is coming to the White House on Nov. 18 to sign a formal US-Saudi nuclear cooperative agreement. Will this agreement finally help the Kingdom make nuclear fuel? Let’s hope not.
Tehran making nuclear fuel is scary enough. Encouraging others to do the same is scarier still.
That’s why the Pentagon bombed Iran this June. Certainly, the White House understood that nuclear fuel-making was too close to nuclear bomb-making: By the time inspectors might detect a military diversion at such plants, it would be too late to intervene to prevent a weapon from being built.
This insight prompted Trump’s termination of Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which allowed Iran to enrich uranium. It’s also why Trump’s nuclear emissary, Steve Witkoff, backed off trying to negotiate a new inspections regime for Iranian nuclear fuel-making, conceding that “enrichment enables weaponization.” Energy Secretary Chris Wright went further: At the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) September general conference, he insisted that Iran’s uranium enrichment program be “completely dismantled.”
But what of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) “right” to make nuclear fuel? Iran maintains this entitlement is inalienable. As I’ve explained elsewhere, nuclear fuel-making is not mentioned anywhere in the treaty. Some NPT negotiators proposed language to assure a right to “the entire fuel cycle,” but the NPT conference rejected it. Even the Biden administration, which wanted to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, only implicitly recognized such a “right” — never explicitly.
Iran, unfortunately, never bought this view. Nor has Saudi Arabia. In 2017, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, former Saudi ambassador to Washington, noted that “the NPT tells us all we can enrich.” He, bin Salman, and his lieutenants have consistently demanded that America help it exercise this “right.”
Fortunately, Congress refused. Back in 2018, Senators from the left, like Ed Markey, and the right, like Lindsey Graham, understood helping Iran enrich uranium was too dangerous. They all cited bin Salman’s warning that if Saudi Arabia thought Iran was getting a bomb, it would too, despite any NPT pledge the Saudis may have made. The Hill’s recommended fix: Get the Saudis to forswear making nuclear fuel, just as their neighbor, the UAE, had in their US nuclear agreement in 2009.
Now, it should be easier to get the Saudis to forswear as well. Why? In September, the Saudis struck a mutual defense pact with Pakistan. Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif said that as part of this pact Pakistan would make its nuclear weapons available to Saudi Arabia if needed. So, Riyadh no longer needs its own bomb.
Meanwhile, the White House is said to be negotiating binding, NATO-like security assurances for the Saudis similar to those recently granted to Qatar. Then there is the Trump administration’s “obliteration” of Iran’s nuclear fuel-making capacity and the president’s commitment to bomb it again, if necessary.
All of this should be dispositive against Riyadh’s will to enrich and American inclinations to bend to it. But it’s not. In April, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright visited Riyadh. When asked if a deal would include “sensitive” nuclear technologies, he replied, “It certainly looks like there is a pathway to do that. … Are there solutions to that that involve enrichment here in Saudi Arabia? Yes.”
He should have said no. Keeping timely, accurate track of the powders, liquids, and gases involved in making nuclear fuel is not yet good enough to safeguard against military diversions. Nor is American ownership or operation of Saudi nuclear fuel making a fix. As America’s experience in Iran demonstrates, the United States can operate bases and own companies in foreign nations and still be thrown out. This has happened before and can happen again in Saudi Arabia.
Another headache if America helps Riyadh make nuclear fuel is the example it sets. Saudi Arabia’s neighbors, who also have US nuclear cooperative will demand the same.
They’ll all race to develop bomb options. Saying no to Riyadh’s fuel-making demands is our best chance to skirt this.
Seventy tonnes of radioactive waste have been removed from a nuclear site’s most hazardous building.
Teams at Sellafield in Cumbria have removed the waste from the Magnox Swarf Storage Silos with the company saying it has placed it into safe storage.
The work began in 2022 after two decades of preparation, because when the building was constructed in the 1960s no-one had considered how the waste would be removed.
Sellafield’s head of legacy silos Phil Reeve said so much waste had been removed that a 7m (23ft) crater had been dug in the middle of the pile.
However, the crater presents a risk of the waste around the edges collapsing inwards.
To fix the issue, Sellafield has created its own version of a garden rake – a 1.4 tonne machine which uses its stainless steel arms to pull the nuclear waste into the centre.
“It’s a big moment to see it successfully deployed in an active environment for the first time,” said Mr Reeve.
“It allows us to crack on with confidence.”
Because the removal of the waste had not been planned when the building was opened, engineers had to retrofit an exit route for it.
This involved assembling huge retrieval machines on top of the building’s 22 waste compartments.
One machine is currently up and running with another two set to start soon.
But while work is well under way, the Sellafield team still has about 10,000 tonnes of waste to remove.
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 31 2025 (IPS) – The United States, the largest single contributor to the UN budget, is using its financial clout to threaten the United Nations by cutting off funds and withdrawing from several UN agencies.
In an interview with Breitbart News U.S. Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Mike Waltz said last week “a quarter of everything the UN does, the United States pays for”.
“Is there money being well spent? I’d say right now, no, because it’s being spent on all of these other woke projects, rather than what it was originally intended to do, what President Trump wants it to do, and what I want it to do, which is focus on peace.”
Historically, the United States has been the largest financial contributor, typically covering around 22% of the UN’s regular budget and up to 28% of the peacekeeping budget.
Still, ironically, the US is also the biggest defaulter. According to the UN’s Administrative and Budgetar Committee, member states currently owe $1.87 billion of the $3.5 billion in mandatory contributions for the current budget cycle.
And the US accounts for $1.5 billion of the outstanding balance.
Speaking to reporters in Kuala Lumpur last week, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: “We are not reforming the UN because of the liquidity crisis that is largely due to the reduction of payments from one main contributor, the United States”.
“What we are doing is recognizing that we can improve, that we can be more efficient, more cost-effective, more able to provide in full respect of our mandates to the people we care for in a more efficient way”.
“We are doing a number of reforms, making the Organization leaner but more effective. And that is the reason why there will be a number of reductions of positions in the Secretariat, but not the same everywhere.”
“And in particular, everything that relates to support to developing countries on the field in order for them to be able to overcome the present difficulties will not be reduced, on the contrary, will be increased,” he pointed out.
Mandeep S. Tiwana, Secretary General CIVICUS, a global civil society alliance, told IPS funding modalities for the UN need to be made simpler and also brought into the 21st century.
The present process, he pointed out, is too complicated and not easy to comprehend. Formulations for assessed and voluntary contributions are confusing and bureaucratic with some countries paying too much and others too little.
A simpler and fairer way would be assessed contributions be based on small percentage of a country’s Gross National Income. This would also allow formulations to be transparent and understandable by people around the world for whom the UN is exists,” declared Tiwana.
The five biggest funders of the UN, based on mandatory assessed contributions for the regular and peacekeeping budgets, are the United States, China, Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom. These countries are responsible for a majority of the UN’s funding and are among the largest economies in the world.
United States: Pays the largest share, at around 22% for the regular budget and over 26% for peacekeeping. China: The second-largest contributor, responsible for about 20% of the regular budget and nearly 19% of peacekeeping contributions. Japan: Contributes approximately 7% to the regular budget and over 8% to peacekeeping. Germany: Pays about 6% of the regular budget and 6% of the peacekeeping budget. United Kingdom: Accounts for roughly 5% of both the regular and peacekeeping budgets.
Referring to the latest financial contribution, UN Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters October 30, “We thank our friends in Beijing for their full payment to the Regular Budget. China’s payment brings the number of fully paid-up Member States to 142,” (out of 193)
Asked how that money would help UN navigate through these difficult times, Haq said: “To be honest, any payments are helpful, but this is a very large payment– of more than $685 million– so it’s well appreciated.”
“And certainly, we thank the government in Beijing. But of course, we also stress that all governments need to pay their dues in full. You’ve seen the sort of financial pressures we’ve been under, and we do need full payments from all Member States,” he declared.
Kul Gautam, a former UN assistant secretary-general (ASG) and deputy director of UNICEF, pointed out that in 1985, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme proposed a simple remedy: no single country should pay—or be allowed to pay—more than 10% of the UN’s budget.
That, he said, would reduce dependence on any one donor while requiring modest increases from others. Ironically, Washington opposed it, fearing it might lose influence.
Asked for a clarification, he told IPS “it is my understanding that the assessed contributions to the UN regular budget are negotiated and approved by the UN General Assembly based on the recommendations of the GA’s Committee on Contributions, which determines a scale of assessments every three years based on a country’s “capacity to pay.”
The Committee on Contributions recommends assessment levels based on gross national income and other economic data, with a minimum assessment of 0.001% and a maximum assessment of 22%.
The scale of assessment of the UN regular budget does not need the approval of the Security Council, nor is it subject to veto by the P-5.
In the case of the UN’s peacekeeping budget, he said, the scale of assessment is based on a modification of the UN regular budget scale, with the P-5 countries assessed at a higher level than for the regular budget due to their role in authorizing and renewing peacekeeping missions.
Historically, the Security Council has authorized the UN General Assembly to create a separate assessed account for each peacekeeping operation. Thus, the Security Council definitely has a say in determining the peacekeeping budget.
In his interview with Breitbart News US Ambassador Mike Waltz also said: “And I would say to those who say, why don’t we just shut this thing down and walk away?”
“Well, I think we need it to be reformed in line with its potential that President Trump sees. And I think my answer would be: we need one place in the world where everybody can talk”. President Trump is a president of peace, he said. He wants to keep us out of war. He wants to put diplomacy first. He wants to create deals.
“Well, there’s one place in the world, and that’s right here at the UN that the Chinese, the Russians, the Europeans, developing countries all over the world can come and do their best to hash things out,” declared.
In an October 17 statement, Guterres said: “My proposed programme budget for 2026 of 3.715 billion US dollars is slightly below the 2025 approved budget – excluding post re-costing and major construction projects in Nairobi and under the Strategic Heritage Plan.
This figure includes funding for 37 Special Political Missions – reflecting a net decrease due to the liquidation of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq and the planned drawdown of the United Nations Transitional Assistance Mission in Somalia.
The proposed budget provides for 14,275 posts – and reflects our commitment to advance the three pillars of our work – peace and security, development, and human rights – in a balanced manner.
“We propose to continue supporting the Resident Coordinator System with a 53 million US dollars commitment authority for 2026 – identical to 2025.”
The 50 million US dollars grant for the Peacebuilding Fund is also maintained, he said..
US engineering and technology firm Amentum and a joint venture of Altrad Support Services and Atkins Réalis will deliver remediation work at the Sellafield nuclear power station over the next 15 years. The two bidders were named for Lot 1 of a £4.6bn Decommissioning and Nuclear Waste Partnership (DNWP) framework, which covers four lots. Procured by Sellafield Ltd, the agreement will see chosen contractors support high-hazard risk reduction programmes at the Cumbrian plant.
The lawful procedure would have been to arrest people if there was probable cause they were involved in drug trafficking and bring them to justice in accordance with due process.
s the Trump administration continues to murder people in small boats on the high seas and mounts the largest U.S. military buildup in decades in the Caribbean, it is moving inexorably toward an all-out, illegal attack and forcible regime change in Venezuela.
Despite Team Trump’s feeble attempts to legally justify its ocean strikes, which have now killed 57 people since early September, those extrajudicial killings are also unlawful.
Donald Trump’s murderous campaign came into focus on February 20, when the State Department designated eight drug trafficking organizations, including Tren de Aragua, as foreign terrorist organizations. Although the administration has attempted — so far unsuccessfully — to use that designation to justify sending immigrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador, Trump is now invoking it in an effort to validate his illegal strikes at sea.
Moreover, on March 15, Trump issued “A Proclamation,” alleging that Tren de Aragua has been engaged, in association with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, in “irregular warfare” in the United States, with no explanation of what is meant by irregular warfare. But on February 26, most U.S. intelligence agencies had made a finding that Tren de Aragua was neither controlled by the Venezuelan government, nor was it committing crimes in the United States on its orders.
On September 2, Trump announced that the U.S. had conducted a “kinetic strike” against an alleged drug smuggling vessel in the Caribbean, even though Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. military could have interdicted the vessel rather than killing all of those on board. Trump wanted to “send a message,” hardly an excuse for premeditated murder.
The lawful procedure would have been to arrest people if there was probable cause they were involved in drug trafficking and bring them to justice in accordance with due process. Both U.S. and international law provide for the arrest of alleged drug traffickers or individuals suspected of acts of terrorism, both on the high seas and in U.S. territorial waters.
In a post on social media accompanied by a video clip of the strike, Trump declared that the attack was “against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists” and referred to the February 20 foreign terrorist organization designation. This did not provide a lawful basis for murdering alleged drug dealers.
Although Trump’s stated rationale is preventing drugs from Venezuela entering the United States, Venezuela isn’t even mentioned in the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s National Drug Threat Assessment 2024.
No State of Armed Conflict, No Unlawful Combatants, No Self-Defense
It was reported in early October that Trump had notified several congressional committees that the U.S. is engaged in a formal “armed conflict” with drug cartels that his administration has branded terrorist organizations, and that suspected drug smugglers are “unlawful combatants” in order to justify the strikes as self-defense………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
There is no current state of armed conflict, there is no evidence that the people on the boats were combatants, and it is illegal to deliberately attack civilians. “This is not stretching the envelope,” Geoffrey Corn, a retired judge advocate general lawyer who was formerly the Army’s senior adviser for law-of-war issues, told The New YorkTimes. “This is shredding it. This is tearing it apart.”
The strikes on boats also violate the right to life enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the U.S. has ratified, making it part of U.S. law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. The covenant says that “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.” It outlaws extrajudicial killing outside the context of armed conflict or by law enforcement when necessary to protect against an imminent threat to life.
An Attack on Venezuela Would Be an Unlawful Act of Aggression
In addition to its increasing numbers of murders of alleged drug smugglers at sea, the Trump administration is positioning tremendous military firepower for what appears to be an imminent attack on Venezuela.
Hegseth ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft-carrier strike group with five destroyers to deploy to the region to “bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States,” according to a Pentagon spokesperson.
“The only thing you could use the carrier for is attacking targets ashore, because they are not going to be as effective at targeting small boats at sea,”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Forcible Regime Change Violates Venezuela’s Right to Self-Determination
During his first term, Trump repeatedly voiced his desire to invade Venezuela and change its regime. He was preoccupied with the idea of an invasion, the AP reported.
In 2019, the Trump administration orchestrated an unsuccessful strategy led by Rubio to carry out a coup d’état, seize power from Maduro, and install Juan Guaidó as “interim president” of Venezuela…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
National courts around the world should investigate and charge U.S. officials, including Trump, Rubio, and Hegseth, with murder under well-established principles of universal jurisdiction.
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