WORLD ROUNDUPThe Revenge of the JCPOA | A Massive Shared Military Deal May Be Europe’s Future | The World’s Underground Bankers, and more

Pete Hegseth Stopped Ukraine Weapons Supply and Kept Trump in Dark  (Alistair Dawber, The Times)
The White House was caught off-guard when it emerged the defence secretary had cancelled military aid flights to Kyiv in January.

The World’s Underground Bankers  (Sujit Raman and Nick Carlsen, Lawfare)
Chinese money laundering organizations have become key facilitators of global illicit finance, threatening U.S. national security.

The Revenge of the JCPOA  (Raphael S. Cohen, Lawfare)
The Trump administration is confronting a familiar problem: How can the United States prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon?

How to Eliminate a Nation: Russia’s Crime of Extermination in Ukraine  (Susan Farbstein, Just Security)
Ukrainians recently commemorated three years since Russia launched a full-scale invasion against their homeland. Since Feb. 24, 2022, not a single day has passed without what President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently described as “aerial terror” inflicted by Russia’s widespread and systematic drone and missile strikes. On Feb. 23, 2025, the eve of the conflict’s anniversary, Russia carried out the single largest drone attack of the war, launching more than 200 drones overnight.
According to the latest United Nations report, in these three years, 12,654 Ukrainian civilians have been killed, including 673 children, and 29,392 more have been injured as a result of Russia’s invasion. In addition to the staggering civilian toll, Russia’s persistent aerial attacks have destroyed 80 percent of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, and damaged or destroyed at least 1,300 healthcare facilities, 3,800 educational institutions, and 250,000 buildings housing about 3.4 million people.
Despite clear evidence that Russia is violating international law, meaningful accountability for aerial attacks—critical to countering propaganda and securing justice for victims—may be difficult to obtain. This challenge is not unique to Ukraine. To date, no international tribunal has held individual perpetrators liable for war crimes or crimes against humanity resulting from unlawful drone and missile attacks. But it is possible.

Deep Rivalry or Elite Obsession? Washington’s Search for Dominance Over China  (Sam Roggeveen, War on the Rocks)
isit the home of any D.C. foreign policy watcher and you will be sure to find bookshelves groaning under the weight of new China tomes. Every issue of Foreign Affairs, the in-house journal of Washington’s foreign policy establishment, is packed with articles about China. We are routinely told that, in a city more deeply divided by ideology and party affiliation than at any time since the Civil War, China is the one issue that brings the warring tribes together.
Yet from the outside (the writer is based in Australia), this preoccupation, and the apparent political unity on the China question, looks like it is built on weak foundations. This is not a reference to policy differences among the tribes. Rather, it is a comment on the gulf separating Washington from the rest of the United States. Because the evidence — or rather, the lack of it — suggests Americans are far less preoccupied with China than those who govern them.
America’s China debate is largely confined to its policy elites, among them Dmitri Alperovitch, who has written World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the Twenty-First Century. Alperovitch, a Russian émigré, is co-founder of the tech security firm CrowdStrike and now a Washington policy entrepreneur who in 2020 launched the Silverado Policy Accelerator.

The Dreyfus Affair Lives On in a New Era of French Antisemitism  (Adam Sage, The Times)
French MPs have called for the Jewish army captain wrongfully convicted of treason in 1894 to be given a posthumous promotion amid a rise in antisemitic attacks.

Trump’s Volatility Is Pushing Asia Toward Beijing  (Derek Grossman, Foreign Policy)
But fears over China’s intentions could limit its regional gains.

A Massive Shared Military Deal May Be Europe’s Future  (Elisabeth Braw, Foreign Policy)
Joint procurement is rare and hard—but also makes sense.