Sweden to Call in Military to Help Crack Down on Gangs | Pakistan Nuclear Weapons, 2023 | Can Europe Survive Trump 2.0?, and more

The fact that his successor, Joe Biden, turned out to be one of the most Europe-friendly U.S. presidents in living memory helped to wash away the bad feelings of the Trump years, making it all feel like a bad dream. Did Trump really toy with the idea of pulling out of NATO? Maybe. Did he really call the European Union a “foe” and Brussels, the seat of the bloc’s institutions, a “hellhole”? Probably. What matters is that he’s gone.
If Trumpgoes on to win the election, the version of Trump that Europe gets would likely be far more unhinged and outrageous than the one they knew — not just hinting to his entourage that he’d like to leave NATO, for example, but actually doing it, or following through on his recent vow to strike a “peace deal” on Ukraine with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the heads of Ukraine and the EU.

Pakistan Nuclear Weapons, 2023  (Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, and Eliana Johns, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)
Pakistan continues to gradually expand its nuclear arsenal with more warheads, more delivery systems, and a growing fissile material production industry. Analysis of commercial satellite images of construction at Pakistani army garrisons and air force bases shows what appear to be newer launchers and facilities that might be related to Pakistan’s nuclear forces.
We estimate that Pakistan now has a nuclear weapons stockpile of approximately 170 warheads (See Table 1). The US Defense Intelligence Agency projected in 1999 that Pakistan would have 60 to 80 warheads by 2020 (US Defense Intelligence Agency 1999, 38), but several new weapon systems have been fielded and developed since then, which leads us to a higher estimate. Our estimate comes with considerable uncertainty because neither Pakistan nor other countries publish much information about the Pakistani nuclear arsenal.

Xi Jinping’s Death Wish  (Robert D Kaplan, New Statesman)
History and geopolitics begin with the tectonic forces of geography, economics, military power, and so forth, that Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987) conveys in a sweeping, brilliant manner. However, as Kennedy himself suggests, global history isn’t only about grand deterministic forces, but about the scarcely predictable contingencies that arise from the psychologies and decisions of leaders themselves, who are often in the throes of passion when they make such decisions. 
The most arresting insight that Kennedy has given us is that change in the distribution of power is constant, and therefore dominance is fleeting. The only question is when and how a great power’s moment in the sun will come to an end.
In this regard, China is a mystery. Its economic and financial problems are mammoth. And with Xi Jinping’s renewal of strict Leninist autocracy, there are now Communist ideologues entrusted with more and more financial decisions. That might not end well. A true economic crisis in China could ignite widespread social unrest. Xi’s obsession with Taiwan, moreover, might constitute a death wish on a scale with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and George W Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Yet China has gone through several iterations over the past century: Chiang Kai-shek’s Confucian warlordism; Mao Zedong’s revolutionary anarchy; Deng Xiaoping’s far-sighted mandarinate; and Xi Jinping’s rigid Leninist autocracy. The future could see other leaders and styles of rule in China that will pivotally affect great power relations. One thing I am confident about, though, is that whatever geopolitics holds in store for us, it will loosely fit within the rubric of Kennedy’s book.

Sweden to Call in Military to Help Crack Down on Gangs (DW)
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has blamed “irresponsible immigration policy and a failed integration” for the violence. He is taking several steps to help stem growing gang activity.

This Summer Previewed the Security Threats of Climate Change: The U.S. Needs to Do More  (Elsa Barron et al., Just Security)
Integrating climate-change risks into mainstream policymaking remains a work in progress, especially in seemingly stable middle-income countries. U.S. officials also need to account for how climate change is altering the physical and political environments in key countries like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea — ranging from extreme weather impacts on military plans, to social and geopolitical transformations. To keep itself and the world safe from climate change, the United States needs to not just reduce emissions, but also invest in financial and technical assistance to support stability in fragile states, mainstream climate risk across foreign policy making, adapt the military, and support a more flexible global migration system.
But the difficult work of resourcing, implementing, and sustaining such action continues to lag amid domestic politicization and shortsighted tradeoffs. Even the Democrat-controlled Congress in 2022 failed to fund Biden’s pledge of providing $11.4 billion annually for climate vulnerable nations by 2024, undermining international security and eroding U.S. credibility. Now under Republican leadership, the House has signaled even greater hostility to climate security investments by proposing cutting $715 million in Department of Defense climate programs that strengthen U.S. capabilities, seeking elimination of important international climate resilience programs, and incorrectly claiming that climate aid detracts from — rather than supports — competition with China.
Such blind spots make the United States and the world less safe, and stall efforts to bolster global climate resilience. If inaction persists, Washington can expect to face growing instability and humanitarian crisis abroad, an increasingly strained and outdated military, and a loss of influence to China. As work evaluating U.S. government progress on climate security has shown, U.S. leadership on climate and security must be matched with resources to reduce fragility abroad, climate-proof U.S. security capabilities, and mainstream climate considerations across key foreign policy agencies. U.S. policymakers should recognize the critical security risks climate change poses, and make commensurate development, defense, diplomatic, and intelligence investments to anticipate and mitigate them.