The Deal That Never Was: Washington Proposed, Moscow Agreed – and Trump Blocked It
Russia no longer expects meaningful negotiations with Trump, having recognized the limits of his actual power within the American system, namely the permanent Deep State.
Key Takeaways
- The Alaska ceasefire plan was originally proposed by the U.S., not Russia.
- The plan collapsed due to U.S. indecision and Ukrainian-European rejection of territorial compromises.
- Russia considers regions such as Donbass, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson historically legitimate Russian territories.
- Trump’s transactional style, evident in both South Korea and Anchorage, reflects a pattern of coercive, short-term deal-making.
- Moscow’s distrust of Washington has deepened; the U.S. is seen as unreliable, politically fragmented, and incapable of sustained diplomacy.
A ceasefire in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, including Ukraine’s withdrawal from the Donbass, was on the table. Moscow was ready – but Washington pulled back at the last moment, letting the agreement collapse.
Felix Abt, Fri 07 Nov 2025 https://forumgeopolitica.com/article/the-deal-that-never-was-washington-proposed-moscow-agreed-and-trump-blocked-it
The Deal That Never Was reveals how Trump’s transactional diplomacy – from Seoul to Anchorage – turned a tangible opportunity for peace into yet another missed chance.
The proposed plan – something akin to an “Istanbul Plus” – was formulated by Washington and then abruptly abandoned. From Lavrov’s revealing interview, which we discuss below, to the collapse of the Alaska summit, the story shows how a U.S.-initiated ceasefire plan in Ukraine failed, leaving Russia skeptical, freezing diplomatic channels, and escalating military tensions.
It was a unique opportunity that could have altered the course of the war and strengthened Washington’s international credibility – but it went unused, serving as a lesson in how short-term political calculations can destroy long-term prospects for peace.
Trump’s Pattern of Transactional Diplomacy
President Donald Trump recently visited South Korea, where he received ceremonial honors and negotiated a new trade agreement. According to reports, Trump agreed to lower U.S. tariffs on South Korean exports in exchange for South Korea’s pledge to invest roughly $350 billion in the United States.
This deal illustrates Trump’s typical tactic: imposing crushing tariffs, extracting enormous investment pledges – and then rolling the tariffs back. He applied the same strategy to the EU, Japan, and others, while China resisted and retaliated. The approach resembles less a coherent protectionist policy than a 1920s-style protection racket, more akin to Mafia extortion than modern statecraft. Many doubt that the promised investments will ever materialize, and the U.S. Supreme Court is set to review the constitutionality of Trump’s tariff strategy, widely viewed as coercive diplomacy rather than sound economic policy.
This approach mirrors Trump’s methods in other areas, particularly in dealing with Russia. During the Anchorage summit, Trump’s envoy proposed a peace plan for Ukraine, which Moscow accepted. Yet Trump later withdrew, issued new demands, publicly disparaged Putin, and escalated tensions through threats of sanctions and missile deployments. The pattern – bluster, theatrical deal-making, and retreat – has become a defining feature of his foreign policy and has severely undermined U.S. credibility in the eyes of many international observers.
Russian analyst Dmitri Trenin, writing in Kommersant, a newspaper widely read in Russia’s business circles, described Moscow’s evolving perception of Trump, suggesting that meaningful business dealings between Russia and the U.S. are unlikely in the foreseeable future. He portrays President Trump as:
- unpredictable and manipulative, alternating between threats and charm;
- motivated by personal glory rather than a consistent strategic vision;
- economically predatory, using tariffs and trade wars to suppress rivals;
- more concerned with optics than substance, favoring photo-op “truces” over lasting peace.
Trenin concludes that Russia no longer expects meaningful negotiations with Trump, having recognized the limits of his actual power within the American system, namely the permanent Deep State. Still, Moscow’s engagement with Trump – the so-called “special diplomatic operation” – served a strategic purpose: signaling to key partners such as China, India, and Brazil that Russia remained open to dialogue and, absent Western interference or obstruction by the Banderite regime, interested in a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine conflict. At the same time, it reassured the Russian public of their leadership’s resolve and reinforced the belief that only military success – not U.S.-brokered, coercive “diplomacy” – can secure Russia’s long-term objectives in Ukraine.
Lavrov’s Interview: New Insights into a Failed Peace Plan
Continue readingRussia urges Trump administration to clarify ‘contradictory’ signals on nuclear testing
By Dmitry Antonov, November 7, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-says-it-wants-us-clarify-its-nuclear-testing-intentions-after-trump-2025-11-07/
- Summary
- Trump yet to spell out what kind of nuclear tests he means
- Russia and US have not tested since 1990s
- Russia says uncertainty is prompting global concern
- Putin has ordered proposals for possible test by Russia
MOSCOW, Nov 7 (Reuters) – Russia urged the United States on Friday to clarify what it called contradictory signals about a resumption of nuclear testing, saying such a step would trigger responses from Russia and other countries.
President Donald Trump last week ordered the U.S. military to immediately restart the process for testing nuclear weapons. But he did not make clear if he meant flight-testing of nuclear-capable missiles or a resumption of tests involving nuclear explosions – something neither the U.S. nor Russia has done for more than three decades.
“If it is the latter, then this will create negative dynamics and trigger steps from other states, including Russia, in response,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters.
“For now, we note that the signals emanating from Washington, which are causing justified concern in all corners of the world, remain contradictory, and, of course, the real state of affairs must be clarified.”
Citing the lack of clarity around U.S. plans, President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday instructed top officials to prepare proposals for Russia to carry out its own potential nuclear test in response to any U.S. test.
Security analysts say a resumption of testing by any of the world’s nuclear powers would be a destabilising step at a time of acute geopolitical tension, notably over the war in Ukraine, and would likely prompt other countries to follow suit.
Russia and the U.S. possess the world’s largest nuclear arsenals.
The last remaining treaty between them that limits the number of strategic nuclear warheads on both sides is due to expire in three months, potentially fuelling an arms race that is already in progress.
Putin has proposed that both sides continue to observe the treaty limits for another year, but Trump has yet to respond formally to the idea.
Brussels attempts to sink Europe in debt to help Zelensky
it represents for European countries a new abandonment of their national interests for the sake of Ukraine.
Raphael Machado, November 7, 2025, https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/11/07/brussels-attempts-to-sink-europe-in-debt-to-help-zelensky/
It is striking how European governments seem incapable of extricating themselves from Ukraine.
The European Union has a dilemma. It insists, against all rationality, on continuing to support and finance the Zelensky regime. But it no longer knows how to continue doing so.
Since 2022, European authorities in Brussels have spoken of confiscating Russian assets to fund Ukraine under the banner of “Ukrainian reconstruction.”
The proposal itself is extremely dubious. The measure would set a serious legal precedent. We know that Russian assets were frozen shortly after the start of the special military operation thanks to the economic sanctions regime. Nevertheless, formally, even under the deficient logic of current International Law, these assets are simply paralyzed, awaiting the end of the Ukrainian conflict.
A permanent confiscation, especially of sovereign funds linked to the Russian Central Bank, would be of a different, fundamentally aggressive nature that would shake international legal security. Many countries, especially Third World countries engaged in sovereign development strategies, may see this as a sign that their potential reserves in euros and dollars are not safe – which could lead, in the short term, to capital flight and, in the long term, to an accelerated search for alternative currencies and payment systems.
In the long run, this accelerates the formation of a multipolar financial system, less dependent on the euro and the dollar.
But the alternative that Ursula von der Leyen’s “gang” is trying to impose on European countries is not much better. On the contrary, it represents for European countries a new abandonment of their national interests for the sake of Ukraine.
The European Commission is trying to force European countries to borrow money in exchange for European Central Bank bonds, aiming to cover the 140 billion euros promised to Kiev in its “reconstruction plan.” Naturally, this loan would represent a new blow to the national budgets of European economies, already affected by the long-standing economic stagnation plaguing the countries in question. To finance the plan, several countries in the region would probably have to raise taxes.
Beyond the fact that some countries in the region, especially the Mediterranean ones, are already deeply indebted, there is obviously the political problem linked to the electoral consequences of a potential tax increase to fund Ukraine. There is a clear correlation between the difficulties experienced by European countries due to support for Ukraine and the strengthening of nationalist or populist political trends.
Countries like Germany, Sweden, France, the Netherlands, and several others have seen announcements of cuts to social benefits over recent years. And although it is never publicly admitted that these cuts could be due to the budgetary weight of Ukraine, it is inevitable to conclude in this direction, as the funding for Ukraine increasingly weighs simultaneously with benefit cuts (and tax increases). An honest austerity policy, implemented for purely economic reasons, would also demand a reduction in support for Ukraine – and that is not what is happening.
Naturally, it is also necessary to take into account that, today, there is no concrete oversight by the European Commission of the use of funds transferred to Ukraine. The money sent by the West has fallen into a black hole of corruption, thanks to the Zelensky regime’s lack of accountability to European taxpayers.
But, to some extent, the very proposition of this collective loan constitutes a chess move by the European Commission. Faced with pressure to increase spending for Ukraine, von der Leyen believes it is possible to convince European countries to approve the confiscation of Russian assets.
This duality imposed by Brussels, however, does not exhaust the decision-making possibilities of European countries. Since these hypotheses require the consensual adhesion of European countries, a Hungarian-Czech-Slovak bloc (which Viktor Orban is trying to build) could simply try to sabotage both propositions, leaving the issue of Ukrainian funding in limbo.
Finally, it is striking how European governments seem incapable of extricating themselves from Ukraine, despite the fact that support for the Zelensky regime continues to pile up costs and disadvantages for each of the European governments involved in this farce.
Trump, Putin, and Nuclear Arms Diplomacy
Gordon Hahn, Nov 06, 2025
As I wrote a while back, it is one thing for a political leader to loosely play with language that circles around making a nuclear threat, as Russian Security Council Deputy Head and former Russian President Dmitrii Medvedev has done again recently in a public social net spat with US President Donald Trump. But it is quite another to play global chess with the repositioning of nuclear forces to actually threaten another nuclear power of superior nuclear weapons strength (https://gordonhahn.com/2025/08/05/trumps-suicidal-nuclear-brinksmanship/).
. This is even more so when said nuclear power is technologically advanced and intent on defending ist homeland. Such a country is Russia – a major world power and the leading power in western and central Eurasia – the World Island, as Halford MacKinder wrote more than a century ago. Russian President Vladimir Putin, after proposing a nuclear compromise Trump in typical American fashion chose to ignore has rolled out a counterthreat. In sum, we are seeing the Bidenization of Trump’s Russia policy, oriented towards escalation in the mistaken belief that Moscow can be cowed into submission to US hopes of preserving its dissipating global hegemony. Let’s review the record.
Putin’s initial instinct to the new Trump administration was to signal Moscow‘s desire for nuclear arms talks, seeing the new administration as a small window of opportunity for achieving greater strategic stability for Russia through the conclusion of a new strategic nuclear arms control treaty (https://gordonhahn.com/2025/05/23/a-new-new-start-putin-sees-trump-administration-as-a-window-of-opportunity-for-strategic-arms-control/). The New START treaty, which entered into force in February 2011 and was extended for another five years in 2021, is set to expire without possibility of further extension in February 2026. Any new treaty would have contributed to the larger US-Russian rapprochement broached by the Trump administration in connection with its now collapsed efforts to broker an end to the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War. Trump’s Ukraine diplomacy was welcomed by Putin, but the result is ‘no dice’ so far, and prospects look dim.
In contrast to the Biden administration, Trump has an opportunity to restart nuclear arms talks with Moscow as part of his self-declared hope of normalising relations between Washington and Moscow……………………………………………………(Subscribers only) https://gordonhahn.substack.com/p/trump-putin-and-nuclear-arms-diplomacy?r=1qt5jg&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
Trump doubles down on nuclear tests as Russia issues warning.
By Reuters, November 1, 2025 , https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/trump-doubles-down-on-nuclear-tests-as-russia-issues-warning-20251101-p5n6z4.html
Washington: President Donald Trump has reaffirmed that the United States will resume nuclear testing, but he would not answer directly when asked whether that would include underground nuclear tests that were common during the Cold War.
“You’ll find out very soon, but we’re going to do some testing,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday (Saturday AEDT) as he flew to Palm Beach, Florida, when asked about underground nuclear tests.
“Other countries do it. If they’re [going] to do it, we’re going to do it, OK?”
Trump said on Thursday that he had ordered the US military to immediately restart the process for testing nuclear weapons after a halt of 33 years, a move that appeared to be a message to rival nuclear powers China and Russia, whose last known tests were in the 1990s.
Trump made that surprise announcement on social media while aboard his Marine One helicopter flying to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping for a trade-negotiating session in Busan, South Korea.
It was not immediately clear whether Trump was referring to nuclear-explosive testing, which would be carried out by the National Nuclear Security Administration, or flight testing of nuclear-capable missiles.
Continue readingChina denies nuclear testing, calls on US to maintain moratorium
US president claims China, Russia have carried out secret nuclear weapon tests as he seeks to justify return to testing.
Aljazeera, By Adam Hancock and News Agencies, 3 Nov 2025
China has denied it has been secretly testing nuclear weapons, refuting a claim from United States President Donald Trump.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning insisted on Monday that Beijing has not broken the informal moratorium that has persisted for decades on the testing of nuclear arms.
Trump claimed on Sunday that, as well as China, Russia, North Korea and Pakistan are all engaged in secret underground testing. He made the comments as he pushes for the US to resume tests.
China has “abided by its commitment to suspend nuclear testing”, Mao said in response to questions regarding Trump’s allegation.
“As a responsible nuclear-weapon state, China is committed to peaceful development, follows a policy of ‘no first use’ of nuclear weapons and a nuclear strategy that focuses on self-defence, and adheres to its nuclear testing moratorium,” she said.
She also said that Beijing calls on the US to uphold the moratorium on nuclear testing, following Trump’s surprise announcement on Thursday that he had ordered the Department of Defense to “immediately” resume tests.
China hopes the US will “take concrete actions to safeguard the international nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime and maintain global strategic balance and stability”, Mao continued.
‘The only country that doesn’t test’
Trump made the claims about secret nuclear tests, without offering evidence, in a television interview with CBS.
“Russia’s testing, and China’s testing, but they don’t talk about it,” he said.
“I don’t want to be the only country that doesn’t test,” he continued, adding North Korea and Pakistan to the list of nations allegedly testing arsenals.
The US has not set off a nuclear explosion since 1992. No country other than North Korea is known to have conducted a nuclear detonation for decades. Russia and China report they have not carried out such tests since 1990 and 1996, respectively…………………..https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/11/3/china-denies-nuclear-testing-calls-on-us-to-maintain-moratorium
Trump’s bet on US nuclear buildout ropes in Japan
By TIMOTHY CAMA . 10/31/2025
President Donald Trump is eager for the United States to build large nuclear reactors again — with Japanese money.
Administration officials are pulling every lever they can. They’re using trade deals, pulling the China card, and even elbowing into the boardroom of the largest U.S.-based reactor maker: Westinghouse Energy.
“The world is wanting to go and
embrace nuclear power,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said last week.
“And guess who’s building their reactors? The Russians or the Chinese.”
The president and his loquacious Commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick,
unveiled two agreements during their trip to Asia this week that, at least
on paper, would lead to a nuclear buildout in the United States and could
boost U.S. reactor sales overseas. — One is a $550 billion investment
package folded into a U.S.-Japan trade deal. Under that, Japan will help
finance $80 billion worth of U.S. nuclear projects. — Under a second
deal, the Trump administration and Pennsylvania-based Westinghouse
effectively became business partners this week.
If government investment
leads to profits at Westinghouse, the deal opens the door to American
taxpayers getting a large equity stake in the company.
Politico 31st Oct 2025, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/power-switch/2025/10/31/trumps-bet-on-us-nuclear-buildout-ropes-in-japan-00631233
Francesca Albanese names over 60 states complicit in Gaza genocide
The special UN rapporteur was sanctioned by the US earlier this year for naming companies profiting from the genocide
News Desk, OCT 29, 2025, https://thecradle.co/articles/francesca-albanese-names-over-60-states-complicit-in-gaza-genocide
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.
Donald Trump’s nuclear testing order sparks pushback from Russia, China and the UN.
SBS World News, 31 Oct 25
Trump said the Pentagon will immediately resume testing the US nuclear arsenal on an “equal basis” with other nuclear powers.
United States President Donald Trump has landed back in the US after a surprise directive to begin nuclear weapons testing that has raised the spectre of renewed superpower tensions.
Trump announced the order on social media, just as he was entering a summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea on Thursday.
It came days after Russia declared it had tested nuclear-capable, nuclear-powered cruise missiles and sea drones.
The blunt statement from Trump, who boasts frequently about being a “peace” president, left much unanswered.
Chiefly, it was unclear whether he meant testing weapons systems or actually conducting test explosions — something the US has not done since 1992.
“Because of other countries’ testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.
Trump also said that the US has more nuclear weapons than any other country and that he had achieved this in his first term as president.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said in its latest annual report that Russia possesses 5,489 nuclear warheads, compared to 5,177 for the United States and 600 for China.
In his post, Trump said — minutes ahead of his meeting with Xi — that China was expected to “be even within 5 years”, without substantiating the claim.
China, Russia express concerns
In response to Trump’s announcement, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun urged the US to “earnestly abide” by a global nuclear testing ban.
Russia questioned whether Trump was well-informed about its activities.
“President Trump mentioned in his statement that other countries are engaged in testing nuclear weapons. Until now, we didn’t know that anyone was testing,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Russia’s recent weapons drills “cannot in any way be interpreted as a nuclear test”, Peskov said. “We hope that the information was conveyed correctly to President Trump.”
Peskov then implied that Russia would conduct its own live warhead tests if Trump did it first.
“If someone departs from the moratorium, Russia will act accordingly,” Peskov said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that if any country tests a nuclear weapon, then Russia will do so too.
Both countries observe a de facto moratorium on testing nuclear warheads, though Russia and the United States do regularly run military drills involving nuclear-capable systems.
The US has been a signatory since 1996 to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which bans all atomic test explosions, whether for military or civilian purposes.
United Nations secretary-general António Guterres said through his deputy spokesman that “nuclear testing can never be permitted under any circumstances”………………………………………… https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/trump-nuclear-testing-order-pushback/a21zghnl1
No signs of suspicious work at bombed Iranian sites, IAEA chief says
Iran International, Oct 29, 2025,
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi said on Wednesday there were no signs of suspicious activity at Iranian nuclear sites bombed by the United States in June, adding that inspectors had gradually resumed some work in Iran.
“We do not see anything that would give rise to hypotheses of any substantive work going on there,” IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said in New York.
“These are big industrial sites where there is movement, there is activity going on and we are very quick to indicate that this does not imply that there is activity on enrichment,” he added.
Iran suspended cooperation with IAEA inspectors after a 12-day war in June against Israel and the United States, codified via a new law passed by parliament.
Grossi told reporters that inspectors had no access to the to sites stricken in June, but confirmed that some inspection was under way.
“We are trying to build it back, and we are inspecting in Iran,” he said, “not at every site where we should be doing it – but we are gradually coming back.”
Respecting NPT
In September, Iran and the agency agreed in Cairo to restart inspections. However, after Germany, France and the United Kingdom triggered the reimposition of UN sanctions, it remained unclear whether Iran would comply.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on Tuesday that Iran’s commitments under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) safeguards agreement with the agency remain in place…………………………………. https://www.iranintl.com/en/202510291624
Trump to reduce tariffs on Beijing amid resumed US nuclear weapons testing order
ABC News. 30 Oct 25
In short:
Donald Trump says he has struck a deal with China’s Xi Jinping to reduce tariffs on Beijing in exchange for resumed US soybean purchases.
The meeting came shortly after Mr Trump ordered the Department of Defense to immediately resume testing nuclear weapons.
US President Donald Trump says he has struck a deal with China’s Xi Jinping to reduce tariffs on Beijing in exchange for resumed US soybean purchases, shortly after saying he would order the resumption of US nuclear weapons testing.
His remarks after the face-to-face talks with Mr Xi in the South Korean city of Busan — their first since 2019 — marked the finale of Mr Trump’s whirlwind Asia trip on which he also touted trade breakthroughs with South Korea, Japan and South-East Asia nations.
“I thought it was an amazing meeting,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One shortly after he departed Busan, adding that tariffs imposed on Chinese imports would be cut to 47 per cent from 57 per cent.
Mr Trump also told reporters the pair would work to keep rare earths exports flowing and crack down on the illicit trade of fentanyl………………………………………………………..
Ahead of the meeting, Mr Trump ordered the Department of Defense to immediately resume testing nuclear weapons on an “equal basis” with other nuclear powers.
“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,” Mr Trump said on Truth Social.
President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday Russia had successfully tested a Poseidon nuclear-powered super torpedo that military analysts say is capable of devastating coastal regions by triggering vast radioactive ocean swells.
As Mr Trump has toughened both his rhetoric and his stance on Russia, Mr Putin has publicly flexed his nuclear muscles with the test of a new Burevestnik cruise missile on October 21 and nuclear launch drills on October 22.
The US last tested a nuclear weapon in 1992.
It was not immediately clear whether Mr Trump was referring to nuclear-explosive testing, which would be carried out by the National Nuclear Safety Administration, or flight testing of nuclear-capable missiles……………………………………………….. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-30/trump-orders-resumption-of-nuclear-weapons-testing/105951930
“Mr President, take our critical minerals”: Albanese in the White House
In an attempt to seize a share of a market currently dominated by China, Albanese has willingly placed Australia’s rare earths and critical minerals at the disposal of US strategic interests. The framework document focusing on mining and processing of such minerals is drafted with the hollow language of counterfeit equality.
the next annexation of Australian control over its own affairs by the US
28 October 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/mr-president-take-our-critical-minerals-albanese-in-the-white-house/
The October 20 performance saw few transgressions and many feats of compliance. As a guest in the White House, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was in no mood to be combative, and US President Donald Trump was accommodating. There was, however, an odd nervous glanceshot at the host at various points.
The latest turn of events from the perspective of those believing in Australian sovereignty, pitifully withered as it is, remains dark. In an attempt to seize a share of a market currently dominated by China, Albanese has willingly placed Australia’s rare earths and critical minerals at the disposal of US strategic interests. The framework document focusing on mining and processing of such minerals is drafted with the hollow language of counterfeit equality. The objective “is to assist both countries in achieving resilience and security of minerals and rare earths supply chains, including mining, separation and processing.” The necessity of securing such supply is explicitly noted for reasons of war or, as the document notes, “necessary to support manufacturing of defense and advanced technologies” for both countries.
The US and Australia will draw on the money bags of the private sector to supplement government initiatives (guarantees, loans, equity and so forth), an incentive that will cause much salivating joy in the mining industry. Within 6 months “measures to provide at least $1 billion in financing to projects located in each of the United States and Australia expected to generate end product for delivery to buyers in the United States and Australia.”
The inequality of the agreement does not bother such analysts as Bryce Wakefield, Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. He mysteriously thinks that Albanese did not “succumb to the routine sycophancy we’ve come to expect from other leaders”, something of a “win”. With the skill of a cabalist, he identified the benefits in the critical minerals framework which he thinks will be “the backbone for joint investment in at least six Australian projects.” The agreement would “counter China’s dominance over rare earths and supply chains.”
Much of what was agreed between Trump and Albanese was barely covered by the sleepwalking press corps, despite the details of a White House factsheet. There were more extorting deals extracted from Canberra, with agreements to purchase US$1.2 billion in Anduril unmanned underwater vehicles and US$2.6 billion worth of Apache helicopters. Of particular significance was the agreement to push Australia’s superannuation funds to increase investments in the US to US$1.44 trillion by 2035, which would increase the pool by US$1 trillion. “This unprecedented investment will create tens of thousands of new, high paying jobs for America.
Back in Australia, attention was focused on other things. The mock affair known as the opposition party tried to make something of the personal ribbing given by Trump to Australia’s ambassador to the United States, Kevin Rudd. Small minds are distracted by small matters, and instead of taking issue with the appalling cost of AUKUS with its chimerical submarines, or the voluntary relinquishment of various sectors of the Australian economy to US control, Sussan Ley of the Liberal Party was adamant that Rudd be sacked. This was occasioned by an encounter where Trump had turned to the Australian PM to ask if “an ambassador” had said anything “bad about me”. Trump’s follow up remarks: “Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.” The finger was duly pointed at Rudd by Albanese. “You said bad?” inquired Trump. Rudd, never one to manage the brief response, spoke of being critical of the president in his pre-ambassadorial phase but that was all in the past. “I don’t like you either,” shot Trump in reply. “And I probably never will.”
This was enough to exercise Ley, who claimed to be “surprised that the president didn’t know who the Australian ambassador was.” This showed her thin sheet grasp of White House realities. Freedom Land’s previous presidents have struggled with names, geography and memory, the list starting with such luminaries as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Not knowing the name of an ambassador from an imperial outpost is hardly a shock.
The Australian papers and broadcasters, however, drooled and saw seismic history in the presence of casual utterance. Sky News host Sharri Markson was reliably idiotic: “The big news of course is President Trump’s meeting with Albanese today and the major news story to come out of it is Trump putting Rudd firmly in his place.” Often sensible in her assessments, the political columnist Annabel Crabb showed she had lost her mind, imbibing the Trump jungle juice and relaying it to her unfortunate readers. “From his humble early days as a child reading Hansard in the regional Sunshine State pocket of Eumundi, Kevin Rudd has been preparing for this martyrdom.”
Having been politically martyred by the Labor Party at the hands of his own deputy Julia Gillard in June 2010, who challenged him for being a mentally unstable, micromanaging misfit driving down poll ratings, this was amateurish. But a wretchedly bad story should not be meddled with. At the very least, Crabb blandly offered a smidgen of humour, suggesting that Albanese, having gone into the meeting “with the perennially open chequebook for American submarines, plus an option over our continent’s considerable rare-earths reserves” was bound to come with some human sacrifice hovering “in the ether.”
In this grand abdication of responsibility by the press and bought think tankers, little in terms of detail was discussed about the next annexation of Australian control over its own affairs by the US. It was all babble about the views of Trump and whether, in the words of Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Rudd “did an extremely good job, not only in getting the meeting, but doing the work on the critical minerals deal and AUKUS.” For the experts moored in antipodean isolation, Rudd had either been bad by being disliked for past remarks on the US chief magistrate, or good in being a representative of servile facilitation. To give him his due, Wakefield was correct to note how commentators in Australia “continue to personalise the alliance” equating it to “an episode of The Apprentice.”
We should never have agreed to AUKUS
Albanese may come to regret his meeting with Trump, the deal and the endorsement by Trump. He may have underestimated the risk in kissing the ring of the Confidence Man.
but now he was a man of compromise, the politician who has exchanged principles for politics.
Australia should have put AUKUS on hold to let the people decide whether it should proceed. After all, we will pay for AUKUS, and we pay the salaries of the representatives of the people
By Kim Sawyer | 27 October 2025, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/we-should-never-have-agreed-to-aukus,20307
Australia is paying for America’s submarines, striking a deal with a President we still have to fact-check. Dr Kim Sawyer reports.
HE IS THE MASTER showman. He knows where to position the actors, where to position the cameras, where to position the lights. He knows how to spray on his make-up and the make-up of others. Every press conference, every Cabinet meeting is the reality show of the showman.
U.S. President Donald Trump is the puppet master pulling the strings of the apprentices. He knows how to play them. Maggie Haberman’s The Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and The Breaking of America tells of the actor who conned the world.
“Young Donald Trump had been an athlete as a teenager, and he aspired to a career in Hollywood. He ultimately fulfilled his father’s desire for a successor in the family business in real estate. But what the son really always wanted was to be a star.”
The reality show The Apprentice made him a star. The Apprentice was his apprenticeship. Trump knows who is willing to be conned; he knows their price or how to determine their price. He thinks he knows the price of everything and everyone, but really knows the value of nothing. He is the confidence man.
Trump is the confidence man of fiction best understood by reading Ibsen’s Master Builder or by viewing the 1958 episode ‘The End of the World’ of the CBS series Trackdown that featured a character who wanted to build a wall, and who had all the confidence of the confidence man. Sound familiar? The fictitious character was called Trump. He was finally exposed as a fraud. The fictitious Trump was finally arrested.
The meeting of Trump and Albanese was his latest reality show, the Master and the Apprentice. The Master got what we wanted. He got the deference he craved. He got the deal he wanted. The Apprentice got what he wanted. He got the endorsement of power of the Confidence Man.
The art of the deal.
Perforce, the deal is a con. Turnbull and Keating understand. Morrison and Albanese do not. We should never have agreed to AUKUS. It’s not just the cost of $368 billion over 30 years that includes $123bn as a contingency for the risk of a cost blowout. The risks are everywhere.
We have already paid more than $3 billion, the premium for a very uncertain insurance policy. As Turnbull has noted, the submarines are currently being produced at a rate of 1.1 per year.
“They need to get to two by 2028 to be able to meet their own requirements, and to 2.33 to meet their own, plus Australia’s. And they have not been able to lift production rates despite expenditure of over $10 billion over the last six or seven years. So, they’ve got a real problem.”
We’ve got a bigger problem.
Governments are like portfolio managers. The government needs to understand diversification, that you do not put all your eggs in a basket of submarines. The defence budget is so tied up in submarines, we don’t have room to invest in emerging defence technologies, in patrol boats, frigates or the amphibious landing craft we need for immediate problems like evacuations. The budget is being skewed towards submarines that will not be supplied until the early 2030s, away from writing off the $70 billion of student debt that three million young Australians face. The cost of the deal.
We have become so inured to the lies of the conman, we have to fact-check everything he says. When Trump said he had been to Australia, I thought it was another porky, but no, he had visited Australia, not as the President but as a spruiker to the National Achievement Congress in 2011. The conman spruiked the message of the grifter as to how to get everyone else to pay his debts. It wasn’t Trump’s first visit to the antipodes. In August 1993, Trump visited Auckland as part of a consortium bidding for a casino operator’s licence. At the time, Trump was mired in debt. The bid was unsuccessful.
Truth and falsity are transactional for Trump. He has always used the mantra. “If you say something often enough, it becomes true.” Interviewed by the Sydney Morning Herald in 2011, Trump criticised Obama’s job plan as doomed and unlikely to have any impact. At the time, the unemployment rate was nine per cent, at the end of Obama’s term, unemployment was 4.9 per cent. Trump was always anti-Obama. Trump was always false.
The other leading actor in the show that we watched last Monday was our own Prime Minister. Albanese had a lot to thank Trump for; perhaps that’s why he had wanted so much to meet him. The polls in February 2025 had the coalition leading 51–49, and then the Trump-Dutton factor came into play. Dutton was Albo’s trump card. No wonder he wanted the selfie with Trump. He invited Trump to visit, perhaps to spruik why Australia is paying for America’s submarines.
Albanese wore a lot of make-up to the meeting. The real Albo shared his confidences in private, perhaps with the other actor who sat opposite Trump, the Ambassador who Trump did not like. Albanese may come to regret his meeting with Trump, the deal and the endorsement by Trump. He may have underestimated the risk in kissing the ring of the Confidence Man.
The risk was everywhere to be seen. Two days before, 7 million joined the No Kings’ protests. Thirty years ago, when Albo was a man of principle, he may have joined those same protests, but now he was a man of compromise, the politician who has exchanged principles for politics.
On the day that Albo met Trump in the Whitehouse, the East Room was being demolished. In 1984, on a tour of the Whitehouse, we were asked to stand still, as the President appeared. Reagan had just left the East Room, where he had given a speech, where Carter, Obama, and FDR gave speeches. The East Room was built by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1902.
Apparently, there was no heritage overlay, at least for Trump. Betty Ford reflected on its significance. “If the West Wing is the mind of the nation, then the East Wing is the heart.” Confirmation that Trump is heartless.
Australia should have put AUKUS on hold to let the people decide whether it should proceed. After all, we will pay for AUKUS, and we pay the salaries of the representatives of the people. However, most will never get to see the submarines, not like the HECS debt on their tax bill. Australia has been too subservient, too sycophantic, too risk-averse in our dealings with Trump. There is a cost to being risk-averse just as there is a cost to being a risk-taker.
The Democrats paid the price for not dealing with Trump as they should have dealt with him. Dealing with Trump is like dealing with the devil; you must deal on your terms, not his terms. He is a convicted felon, a fraudster, a showman, the confidence man who became President.
The No Kings protests showed the divergence between the people and the institutions, between those who will not defer to Trump and those who will defer to him; between right and wrong. History may rewrite some of the story, but not the story of the Master and the Apprentice.
Stabilizing the U.S.-China Rivalry.
| RAND think tank, famous for its influential policy papers which have shaped US-Russian relations, has released an eye-opening call for a change of course on China. This comes by way of the latest Trump-China escalations which, it appears, have greatly worried insiders of the ‘deep state’ system; enough so that for once they have begun swallowing their pride and envisioning a calmer, more placating approach toward China so as not to upset the global status quo too much. |
Michael J. Mazarr, Amanda Kerrigan, Benjamin Lenain, Oct 14, 2025, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA4107-1.html?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
The geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China embodies risks of outright military conflict, economic warfare, and political subversion, as well as the danger that tensions between the world’s two leading powers will destroy the potential for achieving a global consensus on such issues as climate and artificial intelligence. Moderating this rivalry therefore emerges as a critical goal, both for the United States and China and for the wider world.
The authors of this report propose that, even in the context of intense competition, it might be possible to find limited mechanisms of stabilization across several specific issue areas. They offer specific recommendations both for general stabilization of the rivalry and for three issue areas: Taiwan, the South China Sea, and competition in science and technology.
Key Findings
Several broad principles can guide efforts to stabilize intense rivalries
- Each side accepts that some degree of modus vivendi must necessarily be part of the relationship.
- Each side accepts the essential political legitimacy of the other.
- In specific issue areas, especially those disputed by the two sides, each side works to develop sets of shared rules, norms, institutions, and other tools that create lasting conditions of a stable modus vivendi within that domain over a specific period (such as three to five years).
- Each side practices restraint in the development of capabilities explicitly designed to undermine the deterrent and defensive capabilities of the other in ways that would create an existential risk to its homeland.
Each side accepts some essential list of characteristics of a shared vision of organizing principles for world politics that can provide at least a baseline for an agreed status quo.- There are mechanisms and institutions in place — from long-term personal ties to physical communication links to agreed norms and rules of engagement for crises and risky situations — that help provide a moderating or return-to-stable-equilibrium function.
Recommendations
Six broad-based initiatives can help moderate the intensity of the U.S.-China rivalry
- Clarify U.S. objectives in the rivalry with language that explicitly rejects absolute versions of victory and accepts the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party.
- Reestablish several trusted lines of communication between senior officials.
- Improve crisis-management practices, links, and agreements between the two sides.
- Seek specific new agreements — a combination of formal public accords and private understandings — to limit the U.S.-China cyber competition.
Declare mutual acceptance of strategic nuclear deterrence and a willingness to forswear technologies and doctrines that would place the other side’s nuclear deterrent at risk.- Seek modest cooperative ventures on issues of shared interest or humanitarian concern.
More-specific strategies should guide efforts to stabilize the issues of Taiwan, the South China Sea, and competition in science and technology
- Stabilizing the Taiwan issue should focus on creating the maximum incentive for Beijing to pursue gradual approaches toward unification.
- For the South China Sea, combine deterrence of military escalation with intensified multilateral and bilateral diplomacy to create a medium-term route to a peaceful solution as the default international process and expectation.
- In the U.S.-China science and technology rivalry, manage the worst aspects of emerging technologies for mutual security and the condition of the rivalry, and step back from the most extreme versions of efforts to undermine the other side’s progress.
Yanis Varoufakis & Grace Blakeley: Why Everything Feels Broken
Yanis Varoufakis & Grace Blakeley: Why Everything Feels Broken
By Grace Blakeley and Yanis Varoufakis / DiEM 25
In this discussion recorded in Athens, Grace Blakeley and Yanis Varoufakis expose how our so-called democracies have been captured by elites. From Gaza to the climate crisis to the collapse of liberal politics, they explore why even “progressive” leaders are absorbed by the system they enter, how neoliberalism has hollowed out collective power, and why only a bottom-up, transnational movement can reclaim democracy for the many. https://scheerpost.com/2025/10/25/yanis-varoufakis-grace-blakeley-why-everything-feels-broken/
1 This Month
PLEASE OPPOSE HR 8255 AND S.3639 – bills would accelerate satellite deployment, with no environmental review or safeguards – https://ncstd5li.quorum.us/campaign/169331/
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