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by ian bremmer
Leaders of Israel and Iran in front of fighter jets.
On April 13, Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles from its own territory in its first-ever direct, attributable attack against Israel, thrusting the long-simmering shadow war between the two regional foes into the light.
This show of force reflects a dramatic shift in strategy from Tehran, which had previously relied exclusively on its proxies to target Israel. The inflection point was Israel’s bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1, which killed the senior-most Iranian military leader in Syria and was compared to an attack “on Iranian soil” – a bright red line for the Islamic Republic. So from Iran’s perspective, it was Israel that crossed the rubicon first. Last weekend’s attack was a proportional response in that view – and a measured one at that.
Does that hold up? What comes next? And what does it all mean?
Iran’s not-so-escalatory escalation
On one hand, last weekend’s attack was dangerous and provocative, posing the first serious external threat to Israel’s security since Saddam Hussein fired Scud missiles at the Jewish state in 1991 and heightening the deep sense of existential insecurity Israelis have felt since Oct. 7. Had any sensitive military targets been hit or Israelis killed, we would now be looking at direct war between Iran and Israel, likely also involving the United States. Not World War III, but a major regional war.
On the other hand, the fact that we aren’t currently in that scenario means that the attack could have been a heck of a lot worse. That it wasn’t was mostly by design (the other bit was luck): Iran telegraphed its attack well in advance both publicly and through backchannels with several regional powers to minimize the damage and prevent an escalatory response. The heads-up given to the United States via Iraq and Turkey – and the use of low-altitude, slow-moving drones that could be seen coming from literally 1,000 miles away – allowed Israel and its partners ample time to pre-position their military assets and intercept nearly all Iranian projectiles (as well as get Israeli citizens into bomb shelters, out of harm’s way). As a result, of the roughly 170 drones, 120 ballistic missiles, and 30 cruise missiles that Iran launched, 99% were shot down, most before they could reach Israeli airspace. All of them were aimed at military rather than civilian targets.
The advance notice, as well as the choice of targets and weaponry, suggest that Iran deliberately calibrated the strike to limit casualties and keep a lid on potential retaliation. That’s why Iran refrained from using Hezbollah and attacking US forces throughout the region. It’s also why it announced that no further (direct) attacks would be forthcoming and it considered the matter closed as long as the Israelis took it on the chin.
Incidentally, this is exactly the same playbook the US used to respond to the Iranian proxy attacks that killed three American servicemembers in Jordan at the end of January. The Biden administration didn’t want to start a shooting war with Iran (for obvious reasons), so they waited four days to hit back and gave a heads-up to Tehran via Iraq so the Iranians could get their forces out of the area, while cautioning them that next time there would be direct consequences and no such forewarning.
In both cases, if the US and Iran had wanted to seriously escalate, they could have. But the goal wasn’t to escalate – it was to reset the bar on deterrence and relieve domestic pressure in response to a provocation while preventing damage that would bring the conflict into a wide-scale regional war.
None of this means that this was an easy balance for Tehran to strike (no pun intended) in practice. Despite all the calibration and telegraphing that went into the attack, it was still a risky gamble, with lots of room for accidents and miscalculation. Some drones or missiles could have evaded defenses and found their targets. Israeli soldiers or civilians could have died. The US would have treated a successful Iranian strike on Israeli soil as an attack on itself and responded accordingly. The risk of a shooting war with America was not zero, and the Iranians were willing to live with that.
What will Israel do next?
The ball is now in Israel’s court. Israel needs to respond somehow to signal that this type of attack won’t be tolerated in the future, but it is up to war cabinet members Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and opposition leader Benny Gantz to decide exactly when, where, and how to strike back, weighing the benefits of retaliation against the risk of provoking further escalation and alienating Israel’s allies.
Domestic views are currently split between revenge and restraint. The far right is pushing for a strong, immediate, and direct strike on Iranian soil that would likely require US cooperation but that Washington wants nothing to do with, as it would compel Tehran to counterattack and dramatically expand the conflict. Netanyahu wouldn’t mind a war with Iran that draws the US in and extends his time in office, but Gantz and Gallant prefer a more calibrated and strategic response that the US can get behind – one that allows Israel to build a strong anti-Iran alliance and maintain robust US defense support without precipitating a regionwide conflict.
For its part, the Biden administration is working overtime to persuade the Israeli government to opt for a more muted response. Here, the critical role the US played in helping Israel counter the Iranian attack will probably give it enough leverage to succeed where it has previously failed in Gaza.
My bet is that the Israelis will give in to US influence, take the win, and refrain from an escalatory response at this time – meaning no major direct strikes on Iranian territory (for now at least). Of course, that doesn’t mean they’ll sit on their hands. At a minimum, they will hit Iranian proxies and Iranian assets outside Iran. They might even carry out covert and non-kinetic attacks within Iran, such as cyber or sabotage, on an opportunistic basis. These are the kinds of responses that Tehran will be willing to absorb without derailing the current de-escalatory path.
The danger: I could be wrong and the Israelis could overreact as they have consistently since Oct. 7, choosing to directly and overtly strike the Iranian homeland or take out high-value IRGC targets against America’s advice and their own best interests. Such actions would likely cross the Islamic Republic’s red lines and trigger an immediate escalatory response that could quickly spiral into a major war.
What it means
Even assuming cooler heads prevail in Jerusalem and Iran-Israel tensions stay in a de-escalatory phase, last weekend’s attack will have long-lasting implications.
First, Netanyahu’s domestic standing has improved on the back of Israel’s successful defense against an unprecedented Iranian threat in a united front with the US and other allies. This increases the embattled prime minister’s political breathing room and will prolong his time in office. Classic Bibi.
Second, the attack has pushed the war in Gaza off the front pages, as international focus has shifted toward averting regional war and away from the humanitarian crisis in the Strip. As a result, there is less pressure for Israel to compromise with Hamas on a cease-fire deal. At the same time, an Israeli ground operation in Rafah has become more likely, as the Biden administration is now principally focused on getting Israel to limit its escalation against Iran. The biggest losers, as always, will be Palestinian civilians.
Third, the attack is a political liability for US President Joe Biden, who will pay the price for any further escalation of the conflict but now lacks domestic political space to publicly criticize Israel’s actions and can only offer “ironclad” support going forward. Biden’s best hope going into the November election is to dissuade Netanyahu from expanding the conflict, lest he be blamed for presiding over yet another major war. But if he pushes too far in trying to constrain Israel, he’ll be blamed for abandoning a key US ally most voters still support (despite Gaza). Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t.
Finally, Israeli and Iranian deterrence has eroded as both sides have crossed each other’s red lines, dropped long-standing strategic restraint policies, and raised the threshold for future responses. Iran has no plans to stop supporting its proxies in the region, and Israel has no plans to stop targeting said proxies (including Hamas in Gaza). So while Israel and Iran may have narrowly avoided major war over the weekend, the likelihood that further tit-for-tat strikes spiral into a broader regional war is increasing. The longer-term trajectory of this conflict is still expansionary. Sorry about that.
Jess Frampton
The most geopolitically important relationship in the world is fundamentally adversarial and devoid of trust. Its long-term trajectory remains negative, with no prospect of substantial improvement.
And yet, ever since US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Woodside, Calif., last November, US-China relations have looked comparatively stable amid a sea of chaos.
In the months that have followed, both sides have continued to seek steadier ties through frequent high-level engagement as well as new dialogue channels on a wide range of policy areas. In January, the US and China resumed military-to-military talks for the first time in nearly two years. On April 2, Biden and Xi spoke by telephone and ratified their ongoing commitment to manage tensions. The presidential call came after the third in-person meeting between US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in less than a year on Jan. 16-17. It set the stage for US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s trip to China this past week – where she met with senior Chinese officials, local and provincial leaders, and top economists – as well as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's upcoming visit. Both militaries are currently in the final stages of preparation for a maritime dialogue and a likely ministerial meeting at the Shangri-La Dialogue in June.
However, while better managed than they have been historically, US-China relations are coming under stress from a number of flashpoints that threaten to disrupt the relative calm that has prevailed since Woodside.
Second Thomas Shoal. This is the most likely, imminent, and dangerous tripwire for US-China military conflict, following an incident on March 23 in which Chinese Coast Guard ships fired high-pressure water cannons on a Philippine vessel attempting to deliver construction materials to the rusting BRP Sierra Madre – a symbolic Philippine warship, home to a small detachment of Philippine marines, that was intentionally grounded by Manila in the South China Sea’s Second Thomas Shoal in 1999 to assert Philippine sovereignty over the disputed territory.
Beijing refuses to allow any construction materials to reach the Sierra Madre, and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos feels he must continue sending materials to prevent it from sinking lest he renounce Manila’s claim. The latest run-in injured several Filipino sailors but stopped short of causing fatalities. US defense officials believe that if a Philippine sailor were to get killed, Manila would invoke its Mutual Defense Treaty with Washington, prompting the US to send military escorts for Philippine resupply ships. Chinese contacts say that if that happened, Beijing would consider towing the Sierra Madre off the reef, setting up a showdown between the US and Chinese navies.
Tech competition. Xi views Washington’s ever-expanding restrictions on China’s advanced semiconductor and artificial intelligence industries – and its pressure on US allies like Japan, the Netherlands, Germany, and South Korea to follow suit – as an effort to curb his country’s technological and economic development. More than ordinary trade barriers, tech restrictions get under Xi’s skin because they hit at the heart of his strategy to shift the sources of Chinese growth away from real estate and infrastructure investment toward “new productive forces.” Insofar as the US containment policy persists – and it will, as it is driven by a bipartisan national security consensus to “de-risk” – Beijing will eventually be compelled to retaliate.
Trade. A sticking point for labor unions in an election year, Chinese industrial “overcapacity” was a central theme of both Biden’s call with Xi and Yellen’s China trip. Washington’s core contention is that China accounts for a third of global production but only a sixth of global consumption. As a result, China’s heavily subsidized (or outright state-owned) firms are flooding Western and global markets with low-cost goods, especially in key sectors such as electric vehicles (EVs), batteries, and solar photovoltaics, benefiting consumers worldwide through lower prices – and reducing emissions by increasing the adoption of renewables – but hurting the less competitive American manufacturers.
American accusations ring hollow in Beijing when the US is simultaneously granting TSMC, the world’s leading producer of semiconductors, billions of dollars in subsidies to expand chip manufacturing in America. Separate but related, the irony of the US (and Europe) complaining about China making the global energy transition cheaper while at the same time chastising the country for not doing enough to decarbonize their economy is not lost on the Chinese and many in the global South. But I digress.
From Washington’s perspective, overcapacity is a problem at the core of China’s industrial policy model that will be made worse by Xi's aversion to boosting domestic consumption. Given the election-year politics of the issue for Democrats, at least some market access barriers before November are likely – whether through the Section 301 review of China’s steel industry, the Chinese EV data security probe, and/or the likely realignment of Trump-era tariffs on EVs and other imports. Still, anything Biden might do on trade pales in comparison to the risk of major tariff escalation that Beijing will face if Donald Trump returns to the White House.
Taiwan. China’s leadership has concluded that Taiwanese President-elect William Lai is an irredeemable separatist, and Lai sees little upside in trying to persuade Beijing otherwise. Xi’s embrace of Lai’s Kuomintang predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou, in a high-profile meeting on April 8 didn’t help defuse tensions. Lai’s inaugural address on May 20 will accordingly set the stage for a gradual erosion of cross-strait ties over the next four years. The pressure will start as soon as this summer when China begins to regularly enter Taiwan’s contiguous zone, “erasing” the island’s territorial waters and airspace. While these moves will be calibrated and telegraphed to Washington through backchannels to limit retaliation, Lai could escalate and force Biden to respond with a show of resolve in support for Taipei that risks a dangerous cycle of escalation.
But while these irritants will strain the bilateral relationship, there are still plenty of reasons for both leaders to want to maintain relatively stable ties, at least through the US elections.
Biden can’t afford to start a new war when he’s already managing two abroad – one in Ukraine, one in the Middle East – and fighting another at home. Xi continues to face major domestic economic challenges that require him to be much more geopolitically cautious than he would otherwise. Tensions are further constrained from spiraling out of control by enduring interdependence between the world’s two largest economies, neither of which would benefit from faster decoupling let alone military conflict.
Of course, as we saw both in 2022 with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan and in 2023 with the Chinese surveillance balloon incident, accidents and miscalculations can easily overwhelm leaders’ ability to manage the tensions. But the communications channels established since November make such flare-ups less likely.
Neither the US nor China want a free-fall in their relationship this year, and thanks to Woodside, they now have the tools to avoid one. The Woodside truce may bend, but it won’t break.
As one of the first companies to remove college degree requirements from the majority of its roles, Walmart is creating opportunities for associates to build careers based on real-life experiences. The retailer is helping associates grow their skills to fill nearly 100,000 in-demand jobs over the next three years, with or without a degree. This effort is part of Walmart’s commitment to invest over $1 billion in career-driven training and development programs for associates by 2026.
2024 Third Party Candidates
I’ll say it again and again: The 2024 presidential election will be a very close race.
Head-to-head national polling averages currently have President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump – the two major parties’ presumptive nominees – in a statistical dead heat. Some averages show Trump with a slight lead, but one that lies within most polls’ margins of error.
While the polls will no doubt seesaw back and forth over the next seven months, don’t get fooled by the noise. Because of the Electoral College and America’s growing political polarization, the outcome of US elections is determined not by the national popular vote but by the states – and, increasingly, by just tens of thousands of voters in a handful of swing states.
Trump carried most of these in 2016, and Biden flipped most in 2020. The former was decided by about 78,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The latter, by about 44,000 votes in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia. Something similar will happen this upcoming November, with the winner virtually guaranteed to have a narrow path to the White House.
Polls consistently show that most Americans dislike both Biden and Trump and want neither to lead the nation again. The unprecedented unpopularity of both nominees makes 2024 the most favorable environment in a generation for third-party candidates, three of whom are currently in the running: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, and Jill Stein.
But could they have an impact on the election’s outcome? And if so, to whose benefit?
Polls show third parties hurt Biden more on net
First, let’s dispense with the obvious. Third-party candidates have no chance of winning any states in 2024. Not even Ross Perot’s 19% of the nationwide popular vote in 1992 was enough to win him more than a few counties.
But third parties don’t need to win any states or even significant numbers of votes to influence the 2024 result. Even single-digit vote shares could be enough to shift margins in the closely contested swing states that will decide the election, as they have in several recent contests. Indeed, third-party candidates picked up more votes than the eventual winner’s margin of victory in 75% of swing states in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. Insofar as the 2024 race is close, it won’t take many third-party votes in the right places to spoil it.
The strongest third-party candidate in decades courtesy of his family’s name recognition, independent RFK Jr. is easily the best-performing of the three, currently registering 10.4% in the RealClearPolitics five-way national polling average. The far-left West and Stein are each polling at around 1.9% on average. In the six swing states that matter most (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin), RFK Jr. is polling at 8.8% on average, while West is polling at 1.8% and Stein at 1.5%.
Whereas polls last year showed RFK Jr. siphoning more votes from Trump than Biden in a three-way race, more recent polling finds him drawing roughly equal support from both candidates, with some even showing him hurting Biden slightly more. But the margins are small, and the data is far from conclusive.
On the one hand, RFK Jr. bears the most famous name in Democratic politics and is the scion of legendary Democratic leaders such as former President John F. Kennedy and former Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy. An environmental lawyer and activist, Kennedy himself was a lifelong Democrat and competed in the Democratic primary until last October, so it’s not a stretch to assume that most voters who recognize and react favorably to him are likely to be … Democrats. Crucially, Democrats (especially young, progressive, and minority voters) report being less enthusiastic about Biden as their nominee than Republicans are about Trump, suggesting the former would be more open to voting for an alternative candidate such as RFK Jr.
On the other hand, the No. 1 reason to think RFK Jr. could hurt Trump more than Biden is that Republicans and Republican-leaning independents like him much more than Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents do. While the exact numbers vary from poll to poll, Kennedy’s average net favorability is positive among Republicans and negative among Democrats. This trend has grown over time as voters have gotten to know RFK Jr. better and realized his anti-establishment views put him closer to the Republican base than the Democratic one. To name just a few, he is a vocal anti-vaxxer, opposes gun control and Ukraine aid, and has a knack for conspiratorial thinking. All these positions are right-wing coded, appealing more to the reactionary populism of Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, and Alex Jones than the suburban, college-educated liberals who make up the base of the Democratic Party.
Whether he hurts Biden or Trump more will remain an open question for months to come, but what is clear is that Kennedy appeals to disaffected voters on both sides of the aisle who are skeptical of elites and have little commitment to either major-party candidate. It’s also possible that he ends up taking about even support from both of them in the “tipping point” states, in which case he wouldn’t ultimately matter much at all.
By contrast, the far-left campaigns of West and Stein pose a problem for Biden, despite their much smaller vote shares. Biden’s margin against Trump in national and swing state polls is consistently worse with these candidates included than without. Neither West nor Stein will attract any voters who would otherwise support Trump; their appeal is limited almost exclusively to progressives (especially young and non-white Americans) who would either vote for the president or stay home if they weren’t on the ballot. While votes they gain from those who’d otherwise not vote won’t sway the election, siphoning votes from Biden in swing states while taking none from Trump certainly could.
On balance, then, third parties’ continued presence in the race is a bigger threat to Biden and one of the reasons why I believe Trump is slightly favored to win the race at the moment.
Ballot access remains the key obstacle
Polling aside, third-party candidates will have no impact in November if they can’t qualify for the presidential ballot in key swing states.
Gathering the hundreds of thousands of signatures necessary to appear on all 50 state ballots costs millions – possibly tens of millions – of dollars and is usually an impossibly tall order for independent candidates running ballot-qualification campaigns from scratch on shoestring budgets. That’s why the sole independent candidate in the 2020 election qualified for the ballot in only 13 states, none of them swing states. Third-party candidates running under an established minor-party label – such as the Green Party or Libertarian Party – have an easier time with ballot qualification, as most states have lower ballot qualification standards for established minor parties than for true independents.
RFK Jr. has made significant progress on this front in recent weeks, having reportedly amassed enough signatures to qualify for the ballot in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, and New Hampshire, as well as in several non-swing states. The financial backing of his newly picked running mate, wealthy Bay Area lawyer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist Nicole Shanahan, makes it all the more likely that he will qualify for more key state ballots. Should Kennedy manage to secure the nomination of the Libertarian Party at the party’s convention in May, which seems reasonably likely, he would have a straightforward path to appearing on nearly all of them.
The story for the far-left candidates is more mixed. Stein will appear on the ballot in most states by virtue of running under the Green Party label. West, on the other hand, has neither the organizational apparatus nor the funding to mount a nationwide qualification drive. He seems to have secured a place on the ballot only in Utah and South Carolina – two non-swing states – thus far; the considerable challenges he faces to qualify in swing states could render his campaign dead in the water by the end of the summer.
The deadlines for ballot access run from June to August. This means that we are still months away from knowing which states third-party candidates will qualify in – and how exactly they might shake up the 2024 race.
What we do know is that they could.
Zelensky, Putin, Macron
French President Emmanuel Macron has been on quite the journey over the past two years.
In the days leading up to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fateful decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022, Macron took on the role of chief peacemaker in a bid to avert conflict. Once the war began, he cautioned against Russia’s humiliation, offered Putin countless off-ramps, and pressed Ukraine to engage in peace talks. Fast forward to today, though, and Macron has become arguably the transatlantic alliance’s leading Russia hawk, even going as far as openly discussing the prospect of deploying French troops to Ukraine’s front lines.
What caused such a remarkable transformation? French officials close to the president claim that as the facts on the ground changed, so did Macron's strategic thinking. But as my Eurasia Group colleague Mujtaba Rahman teased last week, that explanation doesn’t fully hold up. Let’s see why.
Macron's shuttle diplomacy began with the widely publicized “long-table talks” in Moscow on Feb. 7, 2022, when Putin agreed to refrain from invading Ukraine in exchange for “security guarantees.” Then, on Feb. 20, the two leaders spoke on the phone, and Macron went to sleep believing he had convinced Putin to consider peace talks with US President Joe Biden. The rest is history: Putin reneged on both promises, and on Feb. 24, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Macron’s critics dismiss those early talks as futile, arguing the president was never in a position to deter a Putin hellbent on achieving his imperial dreams (fact check: true).
Macron’s thinking, however, was – and still is – that engagement was justified despite having little chance of success. Otherwise, the Kremlin could have claimed that the West was uninterested in diplomacy and had left it with no choice but war. Trying was valuable insofar as it allowed the West to retain the moral and narrative high ground … whatever that turned out to be worth.
A few months later, in May, Macron gave a speech at the European Parliament where he called on the West not to “humiliate” Russia. This was no slip of the tongue; he reiterated the position a month later in an interview with the French media when he said that helping Putin save face was necessary “so that the day when the fighting stops we can build an exit ramp through diplomatic means.”
The statements drew ire from Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic States, outraged by calls to give in to an invader that was mercilessly shelling civilians amid then-fresh revelations of war crimes in Bucha and elsewhere.
What was Macron thinking then? At the time, the French leader believed that Russia was going to lose the war – even if at that particular moment it was winning the battle. He was under the impression that Putin knew this and was accordingly open to diplomacy. The hope was that by keeping him onside, Macron could eventually broker a peace deal that would both preserve Kyiv’s interests and pave the way for a new, more “strategic” European security architecture – one where Europe would finally take its future into its own hands and be less dependent militarily on the United States.
But that illusion would not last long.
In the weeks that followed, a series of phone calls with Putin led Macron to the realization that the Russian president had been making a fool out of him all along, hardening the president’s attitude toward Moscow. It was a rude awakening, but the facts didn’t change on him – Macron just caught up to them.
As this reality dawned, Macron’s strategic focus shifted to Eastern European countries, whose support he realized was key to keeping his dream of a “strategic Europe” alive. The problem was that France had historically had tepid relations with this part of the world, starting with Paris’ reluctance to embrace eastern enlargement after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. Macron’s direct diplomacy with Putin in 2022 had only made things worse. Ties needed mending, and these countries needed convincing that the European Union could replace the United States as the guarantor of European security – especially in light of Germany’s increasingly apparent geopolitical timidity and the growing odds of a Trump 2.0 pullback from NATO scenario.
So Macron went to work. At the GLOBSEC security conference in Bratislava in June 2023, the French president called for Russia's outright “defeat” for the first time, after previously speaking only of “preventing a Russian victory.” He also apologized to Eastern European countries for “missing an opportunity” to heed their concerns about Russia’s imperial ambitions, pleaded for a European defense pillar within NATO in the face of Washington’s wavering commitment to the transatlantic alliance, and – crucially – opened the door to possible Ukrainian NATO membership.
The Bratislava remarks were made at a time when the West was cautiously optimistic that Ukraine could reprise the success of its 2022 counteroffensive. The military and political outlook has since darkened for Kyiv. And Macron has grown anxious that – far from bolstering European security, unity, and democracy – the war may end in a Russian victory, which would discredit the European Union and destroy its economy. This concern is what prompted the president to publicly weigh the possibility of deploying French and other NATO troops to Ukraine for the first time in late February, when he replied to a journalist’s question about potential Western troop deployments by saying that “nothing should be ruled out” because “Russia cannot [be allowed] to win this war.”
While French ministers have claimed that he was referring only to support troops and not frontline fighters, Macron has refused to accept that distinction. Indeed, despite earning strong rebukes from the US, Germany, and the United Kingdom, he doubled down recently when he said he would not “initiate” such an escalation but it might become necessary.
So what is Macron trying to achieve now? The first-order reasoning is that he wants to create “strategic ambiguity” – in other words, keep Putin guessing about his intentions to deter further aggression and persuade him to back off Ukraine. But the president also wants to prepare French and Western public opinion for the difficult decisions that may lie ahead in the event that such deterrence fails.
Beyond strategic considerations, there is the question of what role Macron’s ambitions have played in his rhetorical escalation. The French president is often accused of wanting to seize the “leadership” of the European Union, but with just three years remaining in office, he is probably thinking more about legacy than leadership now. And Macron's legacy stakes are certainly high. In 2017, he promised to leave France and the EU stronger than he found them. Seven years later, he faces the rising tides of far-right nationalism and the possibility that a Russian victory in Ukraine could destroy the credibility of the union.
Macron realizes that his ambition of a more “strategic Europe” is a long-term project requiring strong backing from the United Kingdom and Germany. But he is also aware that Berlin is unwilling to face up to this new geostrategic landscape in which cheap Russian gas and unconditional US protection are no longer guaranteed. He is therefore hoping that his “boots on the ground” rhetoric can force Europe to confront existential questions about the continent’s security destiny that leaders like German Chancellor Olaf Scholz would prefer to avoid.
Whether his new position ultimately helps or hurts Ukraine remains to be seen. It’s also unclear whether the French leader will finally put his money where his mouth is. After all, France has been a laggard when it comes to arming Ukraine. But one thing is for sure – the Russia dove of 2022 is now one of the West’s most implacable hawks. Putin no longer has an open line to Emmanuel Macron.
Oil rig around the US Capitol.
“A few years ago, we were energy independent, now we’re begging countries to give us gasoline.” —Former president Donald Trump
“Joe Biden has destroyed US energy independence.” —Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)
“Since Joe Biden’s first day in office, he has waged an unprecedented war on American energy producers.” —House GOP
If we are to believe Republican politicians, President Joe Biden is waging a debilitating “war” on American energy. But is that true?
Not quite. After having to import massive amounts of foreign energy for most of its modern history, the United States became energy independent in 2019 – when Donald Trump happened to be president – thanks to the decades-long fracking and shale revolution. Domestic oil and gas production dipped briefly during the pandemic as global demand collapsed, but it quickly bounced back under President Biden.
Today, the US is the largest crude producer in the world by a mile, pumping out over 13 million barrels per day and accounting for nearly a fifth of the world’s total oil production. Indeed, the US is now producing more oil thanany country in history.
A similar story can be told for US natural gas production, which has also been setting record highs since recovering from the pandemic in 2021. As of 2022, the US exported far more natural gas than it imported – the bulk of which has been converted to liquified natural gas (LNG) and gone to Europe to ease the energy shortage created by the cutoff of Russian supplies in the wake of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Last year, the US overtook Australia and Qatar as the world’s largest exporter of LNG, and the country’s export capacity is only set to continue growing.
Meanwhile, the US continues to deploy renewables, such as solar power and battery storage, at a significant rate. Together, these sources are expected to make up 81% of all new electric-generating capacity in the country this year. Such growth is in large part thanks to the exponential decline in the cost of these technologies, whose uniquely steep learning curves suggest they are going to get even cheaper as they get deployed further, in turn boosting adoption, getting more competitive, and so forth.
In short, the US has quietly but surely become the world’s top energy superpower. As Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) put it in a recent op-ed, “our country has never been more energy-independent than we are today.” Much like America’s hegemony in other realms, this newfound dominance does not come without certain geopolitical upsides.
For starters, America’s large and growing market share deprives Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other petrostates of both pricing power and geopolitical leverage, lowering energy prices and boosting geopolitical stability. This was evident in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when US energy exports played a major role in stabilizing global energy markets and bolstering European energy security. US oil supply growth has also kept oil prices relatively in check in the face of OPEC production cuts designed to prop them up.
Even with the “OPEC Plus” additions, the cartel currently controls less than half of the global supply of oil (and shrinking). Eventually, it will buckle under the realization that further production cuts will reduce rather than increase its revenues. When that happens, its members will give in and flood the market with more oil, sinking prices. Lower energy prices stimulate the global economy and help ease inflationary pressure.
Perhaps more speculatively (but even more exciting), domestic energy abundance could also usher in a new era of US technological advancement and productivity growth that increases living standards for all Americans and gives the nation a bigger edge in its budding competition with China. Granted, there’s more that goes into this than just ample cheap energy – but it’s certainly a good start.
If this all seems like tremendous news for America, that’s because it is. And yet, you probably haven’t heard anything about it. It’s just too politically inconvenient a feat for either party to acknowledge (let alone celebrate).
Take Republicans. They don’t want you to know about the energy boom under Biden because it contradicts a key attack line they’ve been using for decades to score political points: that unlike the pro-business, pro-American, pro-fossil fuel Republicans, ivory tower, coastal Democrats are hellbent on sacrificing the country’s energy independence, national security, and economy in a zero-sum crusade to save the environment. If it’s not happening, they don’t have to credit the opposition for it. Case closed.
Alas, it is happening, and Biden does deserve at least some credit for it. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent global energy prices soaring, Biden backtracked on his campaign promise to cut domestic fossil-fuel production and urged US oil companies to “drill, baby, drill” to counteract “Putin’s Price Hike.” Since taking office, Biden has issued more permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands than Trump. His administration approved the controversial Willow oil drilling project in Alaska that had been stalled for decades and expedited the construction of an oil pipeline in West Virginia, and his marquee legislative achievements, the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, have made it easier to invest in all forms of American energy.
The odd thing is that Democrats themselves (with few exceptions) don’t seem to want to take credit for the energy boom they’re presiding over, because record-high fossil-fuel production is – at least on the surface – an awkward fit with their climate goals and a major pain point with a progressive base the Biden administration is already struggling to appeal to on the back of the Gaza war. This was a major driver of the White House’s decision in January to freeze approvals of new licenses to export US LNG – a largely symbolic move that will lower electricity and heating prices for American consumers at the expense of our European allies (and, to a lesser extent, domestic natural gas producers).
But what climate activists and White House should keep in mind is that while drilling for oil and gas does exacerbate climate change in the near term by increasing carbon and methane emissions, the alternative to more American oil and gas isn’t more clean energy – it’s more foreign oil, gas, and coal. And foreign oil, gas, and coal are far dirtier than American oil and gas. However much we may wish it away, demand for fossil fuels isn’t going anywhere for the near future; if the US were to slash its supply tomorrow, other producers would step in to fill the gap, and overall emissions would rise.
For progressives’ ambitious decarbonization policies to really work, they have to be politically sustainable. That means that they have to bring ordinary people along, not just in the future but now, and the way to do that is by ensuring low and stable energy prices. Boosting US oil and gas production as bridge fuels at the same time as we invest hundreds of billions of dollars to make clean energy cheaper and wean the world off carbon does exactly that, trading slightly higher emissions today for much lower emissions tomorrow.
This is an accomplishment Biden should be running on, rather than away from.
The war in Gaza continues, and there are reasons to believe it’s going to persist for a long time still.
There had been a lot of hope that Israel and Hamas would have made a breakthrough deal by now trading an extended (albeit temporary) cease-fire lasting some six weeks for the release of a significant number of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners. Just a week ago, it seemed likely that such an agreement would be reached before the start of Ramadan after Israel reportedly accepted the terms put forward by the United States, Qatar, and Egypt.
But with Ramadan now underway, the much-vaunted deal continues to be just out of reach. And there’s plenty of blame to go around.
Above all, Hamas now refuses to accept anything short of a permanent cease-fire and complete withdrawal of Israeli troops. The group has been emboldened by President Joe Biden’s warning to Israel that a ground incursion into Rafah absent a credible plan to protect civilians would cross a “red line” – the clearest reflection yet of the growing divide between Biden and the Israeli government.
Hamas is exploiting this rift, essentially daring the Israelis to storm a city where 1.5 million Palestinians are presently sheltering under dire humanitarian conditions with nowhere to go, just so it can weaponize civilian casualties and international outrage against them. By choosing continued fighting over a temporary cease-fire, it is putting Palestinian lives at maximum risk – as it has all the way through – to further delegitimize Israel, drive a wedge between it and the United States, and bolster its own political standing. Consider me shocked (not).
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, is doing what he knows best: trying to stay in power. What that means is not only that he has little interest in ending the (extremely popular) war – as he has all the way through – but also that he is more than willing to openly ignore, and even defy, Israel’s closest ally when politically expedient. Case in point: Netanyahu responded to Biden’s red line by declaring that Israel’s own red line is Hamas’ continued existence and promising to go into Rafah despite Biden’s opposition.
This was a rare instance in the war, however, when Netanyahu actually spoke for the entire Israeli war cabinet and the majority of the Israeli population rather than his private interests. Polls show that whether or not they like Bibi, and most of them don’t, the vast majority of Israelis do support the complete destruction of Hamas (whatever that means) and don’t want their military to stop short of achieving it (unrealistic as it may be). If that requires ground warfare in Rafah to take out all the organization’s remaining military capabilities, tunnels, and senior leaders, so be it. And if that comes at great loss of civilian life, creates tension with the US, and costs Israel more support on the international stage, well … that’s a price they’re willing to pay.
Accordingly, the expectation is that Israel will move forward with offensive operations in Rafah sooner or later. (Hamas no doubt is aware of that, which is partly why they continue to hold large numbers of hostages; after all, if they let them all go, what would be left to stop the Israelis from taking out their entire leadership?)
When the ground invasion happens, Biden will have no choice but to act on his red line, issued in response to mounting pressure from within his own party (not to mention blowback on the international stage) to distance himself from the Israeli government. But there’s only so much the president can credibly do given the bipartisan consensus – and his own personal support – for continued military aid to Israel no matter what … which, in turn, helps explain why the Israelis will go ahead with the Rafah incursion in the first place.
If I had to guess, the administration’s response will include a temporary pause in the delivery of some high-profile offensive weapons systems. But defensive systems like the Iron Dome won’t be affected, and the core US-Israel security relationship will remain unchanged. Progressives in Biden’s Democratic base will castigate the response as woefully insufficient … but that won’t stop Trump and most Republicans from seizing on the opportunity to claim Biden is abandoning a US ally American voters actually care about, dwarfing the damage from the botched Afghanistan withdrawal.
The domestic political impact of the pause on Biden will far outweigh its material constraint on Israel’s military capabilities, putting the president in an unenviable position. Everyone knows there is no credible risk to continued US military support for Israel. The fact that the Biden administration is having to airdrop humanitarian aid and deploy the military to circumvent a blockade being imposed by one of its closest allies makes it painfully clear that Washington has very little leverage over Israel’s actions … but no less responsibility for them in the eyes of much of the world – and many Americans at home.
That poses a serious and growing political challenge for the president in an election year … and a risk of wider radicalization worldwide, in an environment where Israel and the United States have lost the global information war and are becoming more isolated, with no easy way to contain the fallout.
Joe Biden and Donald Trump
Last time I wrote about the 2024 US election back in November, I rated the outcome of the rematch between President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump a coin flip.
Today, with eight months left until the votes are counted and as the most unwanted sequel since “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie's Island Adventure” kicks into high gear, Trump is looking like the slight favorite to return to the White House in 2025.
There are several reasons why.
Biden is unambiguously behind in the polls
If you ask me, Biden is doing a reasonable-to-good job on policy. The post-pandemic inflation has been all but conquered. Unemployment has stayed under 4% throughout. Real wages are up, gas prices are down, and the stock market keeps hitting record highs. Violent crime is near 50-year lows. Oil and gas production is at all-time highs.
But most Americans disagree. Biden’s average job approval ratings have been hovering around 38-39% since October last year, reflecting a drop in support among young progressives who disapprove of his support for Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks. Biden’s approval is lower than any modern president’s at this juncture in a reelection campaign except for Jimmy Carter’s … and we know how that one turned out.
While head-to-head polling is less predictive than an incumbent’s job approval this far out, all recent national and swing state polls show Biden trailing Trump. Trump’s advantage is also clear when looking at top-issue polling. A Bloomberg/Morning Consult swing state poll (covering Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia – the closest states in 2020) last week asked voters which issues are “very important” to their vote in November. The top five issues were the economy, democracy, crime, immigration, and health care. Trump has sizable leads on who voters trust to handle three of five of these top issues, and he leads on secondary issues such as infrastructure, US-China relations, housing, and guns. He also leads on nearly every economic subcategory in the poll, including all cost-of-living issues, which are a major vulnerability for Biden.
Yes, polls can be and have been wrong before, and polling averages are still reasonably close. And fewer people are responding to polls than they used to — so we really should be careful with these numbers. Plus, Super Tuesday was only just yesterday, so until very recently many voters didn’t believe it’d really come down to Biden vs. Trump, meaning there is still a lot of room for polls to move as the campaign begins in earnest. A lot could and will change in the next eight months in an extremely volatile domestic and global environment. And of course, anything could happen on the health front for either of the two candidates.
But Trump’s clear lead in head-to-head matchups and Biden’s persistently low approval rating suggest Trump is currently the modest favorite in a close race.
SCOTUS helps Trump keep the focus on Biden
As I wrote in November, Biden and Trump are both historically unpopular candidates, meaning that whoever is the main character of the election is likely to lose. That’s why they’re each trying to frame the election as a referendum on the other.
Biden’s most obvious liability is his age (also a liability for Trump, to be sure), something he can do nothing to overcome. Moreover, as the incumbent president, he’s the go-to lightning rod for the national mood. All the things people believe are going wrong in this country (especially illegal immigration) – and even things that are going wrong abroad, such as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza – are his fault by default. The buck, after all, stops at the Oval Office. These weaknesses are not going away between now and November – if anything, they’re getting worse.
Trump’s biggest liability, meanwhile, is his unfitness for office. This is best captured by the 91 felony counts he faces in four separate cases – the first criminal charges ever faced by a US president … all of which now look unlikely to have any impact on the election. The one wildcard issue that could have seriously dented the Trump campaign, a federal criminal conviction before the election, became dead in the water last week when the Supreme Court agreed to hear Trump’s case for presidential immunity in his DC election interference trial. The court set oral arguments for the week of April 22 and issued a stay on proceedings in the trial until the court rules, effectively pushing the trial’s timeline – which was expected to start in the spring and run throughout the summer campaign – significantly back.
Coupled with the court’s unanimous ruling on Monday keeping the former president on the ballot nationwide (overturning a Colorado state court ruling that held he was disqualified based on Section Three of the 14th Amendment), this decision was a gift to Trump. The election interference case was the greatest political risk to the former president, reminding independent voters and moderate Republicans of Trump’s actions on Jan. 6. But even on the court’s expedited timeline, it now looks unlikely that the DC trial – the one case most likely to have brought a felony conviction against Trump – will begin before August (presuming the court denies the former president immunity, as most legal analysts think it will). With the trial expected to last 8-12 weeks, the odds of a conviction before November are now exceedingly low.
Polling shows that a guilty verdict in the Jan. 6 case would cost Trump significant support from independents and moderate Republicans. Taking that risk off the table neutralizes one of his campaign’s biggest vulnerabilities and helps Trump keep the focus on Biden. The remaining cases against Trump have limited electoral importance. The Florida classified documents trial is almost certain to be delayed, too. The Manhattan cases are widely seen by Republicans as nakedly political and therefore meaningless. While the Georgia case on election racketeering, in many ways the most serious of them all, has become politically fraught because of allegations of misconduct against the lead prosecutor.
Trump’s other major weakness in the past has been his inability to keep the campaign’s focus off himself. But so far, he looks to be running a remarkably disciplined campaign, staffed by veteran professionals who are keeping him on message and deploying him strategically throughout the primaries. Sure enough, his all-caps rants on Truth Social are still unhinged, and the signs of age-related mental decline are becoming more pronounced with each rally, but by and large, the craziness is either not breaking through into the mainstream media anymore or it’s already baked into voters’ assessments of him. To the extent that Republicans only need to run a good-enough candidate to beat an unpopular incumbent, Trump may be turning into that – with a generous assist from the Supreme Court.
Party unity, third parties also likely to benefit Trump
Trump and Biden’s ability to consolidate and mobilize their bases will be a major factor in November, and according to a New York Times/Siena poll released over the weekend, Trump is miles ahead of Biden on this front: 48% of Republican primary voters say they are “enthusiastic” about Trump, while only 23% of Democratic primary voters are “enthusiastic’ about Biden and 26% are “dissatisfied” with the president.
This split in the Democratic Party, fueled by concerns about Biden’s age and his response to the Israel-Hamas war, is evident in the president’s depressed approval ratings and eroding support with minority voters. Most critically, the NYT/Siena poll shows Trump is winning 97% of those who say they voted for him in 2020, while Biden is winning only 83% of his 2020 voters, 10% of whom say they will back Trump in November.
Third-party and independent candidates are also likely to play the biggest role in an election since 1992 amid high dissatisfaction with both Biden and Trump. While these candidates face an uphill battle to get on the ballot in the first place and have no chance of winning any states in November if they do, they can still play a spoiler in the handful of swing states that will decide the election.
Polling suggests that independent Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose campaign recently announced it had gathered enough signatures to qualify for the ballot in Arizona and Georgia, would take roughly the same number of votes from Trump as he would from Biden. By contrast, the far-left campaigns of Jill Stein and Cornel West are nearly guaranteed to reduce Biden’s vote share, drawing almost exclusively from dissatisfied progressives and minorities who would otherwise vote for the president or stay home. Recent national and swing state polls show Trump’s lead over Biden widening when third partiers are included, posing yet another headwind to Biden’s campaign.
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