WORLD ROUNDUPChina’s Presence in Latin America Has Expanded Dramatically | Trump Will Abandon NATO, and more
· Trump Will Abandon NATO
If reelected, he would end our commitment to the European alliance, reshaping the international order and hobbling American influence in the world
· Stop Federal Grants from Strengthening China’s Military
New evidence shows that the Department of Defense is still collaborating with China on the development of critical technology
· In China’s Shadow, Philippines and Japan Sign Groundbreaking Defense Pact
Agreement provides a framework for security operations including joint military drills and maritime patrols
Trump Will Abandon NATO (Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic)
don’t give a shit about NATO.” Thus did former President Donald Trump once express his feelings about America’s oldest and strongest military alliance. Not that this statement, made in the presence of John Bolton, the national security adviser at the time, came as a surprise. Long before he was a political candidate, Trump questioned the value of American alliances. Of Europeans, he once wrote that “their conflicts are not worth American lives. Pulling back from Europe would save this country millions of dollars annually.” NATO, founded in 1949 and supported for three-quarters of a century by Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike, has long been a particular focus of Trump’s ire. As president, Trump threatened to withdraw from NATO many times—including, infamously, at the 2018 NATO summit.
But during Trump’s time in office, the withdrawal never happened. That was because someone was always there to talk him out of it. Bolton says he did; Jim Mattis, John Kelly, Rex Tillerson, Mike Pompeo, and even Mike Pence are thought to have done so too.
But they didn’t change his mind. And if Trump is reelected in 2024, none of those people will be in the White House. All of them have broken with the former president, in some cases dramatically, and there isn’t another pool of Republican analysts who understand Russia and Europe, because most of them either signed statements opposing him in 2016 or criticized him after 2020. In a second term, Trump would be surrounded by people who either share his dislike of American security alliances or don’t know anything about them and don’t care. This time, the ill will that Trump has always felt toward American allies would likely manifest itself in a clear policy change. “The damage he did in his first term was reparable,” Bolton told me. “The damage in the second term would be irreparable.”
Stop Federal Grants from Strengthening China’s Military (Marco Rubio, National Interest)
Last November, investigative reporters uncovered that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) had provided $30 million in artificial intelligence research grants to a Chinese scientist at the Beijing Institute of Technology, a university tasked with developing next-generation weapons for the People’s Liberation Army. The news came as a shock to American policymakers and ordinary citizens alike. It was unthinkable that the U.S. government would fund our chief adversary’s defense industrial base.
I would like to say the story ends there. The reality, however, is that this scandal is just the tip of the iceberg. A new unclassified analysis provided to my office by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) reveals that U.S. taxpayers have been unwittingly funding thousands of Chinese experiments with direct applications to the Chinese military. Their findings note more than 5,000 instances of research collaboration between the DoD’s funding agencies and Chinese entities between 2019 and 2024.
These are not just any entities but groups closely linked to Beijing’s ambitions to steal American technology and defeat the U.S. military in a potential conflict. NCIS specifically records eighty-one collaborations with China’s nuclear weapon research and development complex, hundreds of collaborations with the “Seven Sons of National Defense” and the “Seven Sons of Ordnance Industry”—China’s premier defense industry-affiliated universities—and seventeen collaborations with China’s National University of Defense Technology—the People’s Liberation Army’s premier scientific research institute. NCIS also reports dozens of collaborations connected to Beijing’s “acknowledge talent” program, an initiative that recruits top minds to appropriate information and expertise for China’s economic and military development.
In China’s Shadow, Philippines and Japan Sign Groundbreaking Defense Pact (Jason Gutierrez, BenarNews / RFA)
The Philippines and Japan signed a defense pact Monday that will allow troops to be deployed in each other’s country, a landmark agreement seen as a counterweight to China’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea.
Filipino Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. and Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa signed the Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) at a ceremony in Manila witnessed by Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
Japan’s foreign and defense ministers were in the Philippine capital for so-called “two-plus-two” meetings with their Filipino counterparts.
The RAA serves as a framework for security operations and training between the two nations, including joint military drills and maritime patrols in South China Sea waters claimed by Beijing but that lie within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.
Japan has pursued similar agreements with a handful of countries, such as the United Kingdom and Australia, but this is a first in Asia.
It also signifies the first time Japanese troops will be allowed to return to Philippine soil since the Imperial army’s occupation during World War II.