FOREIGN AFFAIRS MAGAZINE (February 5, 2025): Today, about 20 percent of southeastern Ukraine is under Russian occupation, including Crimea and large parts of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions. Russian President Vladimir Putin has painted the war in Ukraine as a nationalist campaign to repel Western advances and reclaim territory that, in his view, rightfully belongs to Russia. But conquest has another motivation: economic gain. If Russia maintains military control over these regions, it may be hoping to reap that benefit. At this stage, however, it is hardly clear that they would become economic assets for Moscow; supporting the war-torn territories could just as easily become a drain on its coffers.
The human costs of this war are enormous. Russian forces are ruling occupied Ukraine with an iron fist, engaging in a ruthless campaign of torture, kidnapping, violence, and arbitrary killing. Any assessment of the war’s economic consequences should not minimize its awful depravity or the immense suffering it has inflicted. But its economic outcome will affect future judgments of Putin’s decision to invade in February 2022. If Russia benefits economically from the occupation of Ukraine, the war may be remembered as a strategic success, albeit a coldblooded one. If Russia instead suffers economically, the invasion will be seen as a self-defeating, barbaric blunder.
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT (February 5, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Turbulent Priest’ – Pope Francis’s autobiography; Richard Flanagan in the atomic age; Poetry from Gaza; Richard Ayoade’sdoppelganger and Eimear McBride on repeat…
This week’s @TheTLS, featuring A. N. Wilson on Pope Francis; @funesdamemorius on Richard Ayoade; @lindseyhilsum on writing from Gaza; Adam Mars-Jones on The Brutalist; Damon Galgut on Eimear McBride; Beejay Silcox on Richard Flanagan – and more pic.twitter.com/Ks0liMNF0k
MONOCLE RADIO (February 5, 2025): As Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s transitional president, meets Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, we ask: what role is Turkey seeking to play when it comes to regional security?
Then we discuss Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to the White House to see Donald Trump. Plus, a ceasefire in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, former Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg makes a comeback in Norwegian politics and press freedom in Czechia.
The billionaire is creating major upheaval as his team sweeps through agencies, in what has been an extraordinary flexing of power by a private individual.
The billionaire has used the social media site to boast of victories, lash out at enemies and conduct polls for the initiative he calls the Department of Government Efficiency.
After a 10 percent tariff on Chinese products took effect on Tuesday, China announced retaliatory measures, including tariffs and an investigation of Google.
Senate Panel Pushes Through Kennedy’s Nomination Along Party Lines
Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican torn between his concerns as a doctor and supporting President Trump, voted to send Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination as health secretary to the full Senate.
THE ECONOMIST MAGAZINE (February 3, 2025): That Donald Trump may unleash a global trade war is a frightening but familiar risk. Less well understood is the danger that he may also provoke a tax war. One of his first actions on returning to the White House was to warn other countries that if they adopt tax policies America dislikes, he may double tax rates on their companies and even their citizens.
Baby boomers have safeguarded and perpetuated a grand myth through which they interpret past and present events, and derive motivations. Myth is one hell of a drug.
Baby boomer conservatism arose during the salad days of American capitalism, the apex of American military might, and the drama of the Cold War. That’s all gone and the young right stands at a crossroads.
MONOCLE RADIO (February 4, 2025): As the trial of South Korea’s impeached president continues, Monocle’s Seoul correspondent, Jeyup S Kwaak, and John Nilsson-Wright join Emma Nelson to discuss what comes next.
Also on the programme: is USAID doomed? We delve into the global consequences of freezing US aid. Then: after an eight-month wait, Belgium has a new government. What took it so long? Plus: all the winners from Sundance Film Festival and the Critics’ Choice Awards with Karen Krizanovich.
A growing number of countries, including American allies, are striking trade deals as the Trump administration erects a higher fence around its global commerce.
Guantánamo Bay Prepares for President Trump’s Migrant Surge
About 300 servicemembers have arrived in recent days as the base faces its most drastic changes since the Pentagon opened a prison there after the Sept. 11 attacks.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS MAGAZINE (February 3, 2025): Donald Trump begins his presidency with ambitions of being a peacemaker. He laid out this vision in his inaugural address, declaring that his administration “will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars we end, and perhaps most importantly, by the wars we never get into.” Later that day, he basked in the success of the hostage cease-fire deal in Gaza, including by bringing the families of Israeli hostages to the inaugural parade. “We’re getting a lot of people out in a short period of time,” he proclaimed.
There is no doubt that Trump helped secure the cease-fire deal. But to be a peacemaker who transforms the Middle East, he has more work to do. The main issues he confronts are Gaza and Iran. In Gaza, Israel and Hamas have different views of what is required to achieve the second phase of the deal, which would save the remaining hostages and produce a permanent cease-fire. Iran, meanwhile, is accelerating its nuclear program—with its “foot on the gas pedal” according to Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Tehran thus continues to existentially threaten Israel. Both issues are likely to dominate upcoming talks between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
DAVID MAKOVSKY is the Director of the Program on Arab-Israel Relations at the Washington Institute of Near East Policy and an Adjunct Professor of Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He served as a Senior Adviser to the special envoy of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in the Office of the Secretary of State during the Obama administration.
DENNIS ROSS is Counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a Professor at Georgetown University. A former U.S. Envoy to the Middle East, he served in senior national security positions in the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, and Obama administrations.
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