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US-Canada trade war helps Mark Carney's election prospects
With recent tensions between Zelensky and Washington, how likely are the Saudi-hosted peace talks to yield real progress?
Well, we'll find out real soon. Zelensky has certainly made his efforts to make nice on the critical minerals deal, on apologizing to the Trump White House for a meeting that frankly he has very little to apologize for, and that certainly has helped with getting this engagement going. Also, he's not attending personally, rather, his key envoys and advisors meeting with Secretary of State Rubio and National Security Adviser Waltz. I suspect that the meetings will end up being just fine, but they are unlikely to lead to a ceasefire because what the Ukrainians are prepared to accept, the Russians are not close to accepting. So either Trump is going to have to be willing to take some time, bring it to the Russians and see that the Russians are not playing full ball, or he's going to have to throw the Ukrainians under the bus more and make greater demands that they're not prepared to accept. I don't think either of those things are likely to happen today, but that's I think, the direction of travel.
Are we on the cusp of a nuclear proliferation era as Poland and Germany talk of acquiring nuclear weapons?
Germany's talking more about sharing in the nuclear umbrella with France. Poland's talking about getting its own. These things are all harder. They will take longer than these countries have. It's not like France's nuclear umbrella is deep or easily extendable. In order to have anyone believe credibly that a French deterrent would apply to other countries, a lot of things have to happen in terms of coordination and infrastructure and building up those capabilities that will take frankly years. So, I think it's important that these conversations are happening. I think that many countries around the world are moving towards establishing their own nuclear capabilities in, around, the Middle East. I can certainly see over time as Iran gets closer, the Saudis thinking about it, the Turks thinking about it, in Asia, South Korea and Japan. In Europe, a number of countries needing to have collective security because they don't feel like the Americans can provide for them. But I don't think those things are happening overnight. The global order is changing. It is really past the tipping point, but these things are slow moving processes.
Does Justin Trudeau's replacement, Mark Carney, have a shot of winning Canada's general election?
Certainly does, and three months ago would've had no shot at all. There's been an extraordinary bounce back for the Liberal Party, in part because they're now represented by someone that is not an incumbent. Think about what would've happened in the US if it hadn't been Biden or Kamala Harris, but had been an outsider after general primary, better shot of winning. That's exactly what the Canadians have now done. Trudeau forced down, Chrystia Freeland, his deputy prime minister, getting 8% in the Liberal caucus vote, and Carney getting almost 86%. So he's a centrist. He's in much better position to give a serious run against Pierre Poilievre of the Conservatives. The big question is how is Trump going to respond? Because on the one hand, it's very easy for Trump to now say, "Trudeau's gone because of me, and I'm now willing to work with somebody who is more reasonable," and the markets would certainly appreciate that. On the other hand, short of him doing that, and I think it's unlikely that he's going to reach out and extend a hand to the Canadians, then Trump beating on Canada more gives Carney a better shot of winning because he's the guy that can manage an economic crisis and also because the Canadians are so united in their anger with the United States, kind of like Mexico is right now, kind of like a number of European countries are right now. So Trump is definitely a uniter, just not inside the US, more inside other countries.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk attends a European Union leaders special summit to discuss Ukraine and European defense in Brussels, Belgium, on March 6, 2025.
Might Poland go nuclear?
As Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky was in Saudi Arabia Monday ahead ofUS-Ukrainian talks, his military launched its largest drone attack on Moscow overnight, killing two people. And if you ask Elon Musk, he was also busy attacking X. On Monday, Musk claimed without evidence that his social media platform went dark yesterday because it was targeted by a “massive cyberattack” traced to “the Ukraine area.”
Meanwhile, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk has made waves in recent days.
When Poland joined NATO in 1999, it appeared the country could count on the most successful military alliance in history to protect its borders against future threats. At the time, an American renunciation of NATO was hard to imagine.
On Friday, Tusk warned his country that a “profound change of American geopolitics” forces his government to prepare to double the size of its military and to “reach for opportunities related to nuclear weapons.” In the past, Poland’s leaders have suggested hosting the nuclear weapons of others, but the hint that Poland might develop its own arsenal in response to potential Russian aggression and a feared US retreat from Europe is something new.
Tusk’s jarring comments reflect a spiral in relations between Tusk’s government and the Donald Trump administration. A series ofaccusations and insults flew over the weekend between Poland’s foreign minister, Trump adviser Elon Musk, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio over the Musk-owned Starlink satellite system that supports Ukraine’s forces on the battlefield.
The PM’s suggestion that Poland might look to nuclear weapons in part reflects political worries. Poland will hold a first round ofpresidential elections in May, and Poles look likely to back a leader they believe can stand up to both Trump and Vladimir Putin.
But acquiring nuclear weapons would be time-consuming, politically fraught, and enormously expensive for Poland.
President Joe Biden meets with China's President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC Summit in Lima, Peru, on Nov. 16, 2024.
China says no to AI-powered nukes
In a 90-minute meeting on the sidelines of the APEC conference in Lima, Peru, on Saturday, the two world leaders hashed out the agreement after months of reported resistance from China to engage at all in nuclear arms talks.
In a national security memo last month, the Biden administration explicitly prohibited the use of AI to skirt existing protocols around launching nuclear weapons. But China had resisted making a public declaration until now.
The two countries are locked in a race to build up their respective AI capabilities — and that’s deeply intertwined with their military ambitions. The US, which has a technological edge due to having the largest global chip designers and AI software companies, has enacted strict export controls to keep this technology out of China’s hands. With the Trump administration coming to power in January, it’s unclear how Washington’s China policy will change, though it is expected to be similarly aggressive.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gestures as he addresses a news conference at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany, February 16, 2016.
Will Israel strike Iran – and if so, how hard?
At least nine people were killed in airstrikes on central Beirut early Thursday as Israel intensified its campaign in Lebanon — while also vowing to retaliate for Iran’s missile attack on Tuesday.
Having eliminated Hassan Nasrallah and much of the terrorist group’s high command, Israel now sees an opportunity to strike while command networks are still reorganizing.
On Thursday, Israel also launched a strike on a West Bank refugee camp, killing at least 14, and nearly 100 others were killed in Gaza airstrikes, where the local health authority says the civilian death toll has surpassed 41,000 since Oct. 7, 2023.
How far will Israel go? Iran attempted to avenge Nasrallah’s assassination by firing a barrage of ballistic missiles against Israel on Tuesday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sworn to respond — and, given his risk tolerance level of late, speculation abounds as to what he might do.
US President Joe Biden and other G7 leaders, while affirming Israel’s right to respond to the Iranian attack, warned Netanyahu that it should be proportional. The signal: Don’t hit nuclear facilities.
Republican US Sen. Lindsey Graham on Thursday slammed the White House for this, and some Israeli officials have indeed called for strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, though that remains a remote risk. Those facilities are believed to be well-protected under multiple meters of granite and may prove impossible to fully destroy.
What is more likely — but still escalatory — says Eurasia Group’s Cliff Kupchan is an attack on parts of Iran’s oil industry, the country’s economic lifeline. “The most damaging targets would be oil refineries, oil production facilities, and oil export terminals, in the order of least to most provocative,” he says.
Refineries mostly provide fuel for domestic purposes and might be easier to seal off, depending on how much warning Israel provides. But “if [Iranians] can’t export their 1.5 to 1.6 million barrels a day, they lose critical income,” Kupchan adds.
Early Friday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, made a rare public sermon in Tehran. Just three days before the first anniversary, he said the Oct. 7 attack that killed more than 1,200 Israelis was "legitimate" and justified Tehran's attack on Israel on Tuesday. He also called upon Arab nations to unite against Israel, referring to it as their “common enemy.”
Putin's nuclear policy revision is a sign of weakness
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden and co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, shares his perspective on European politics from the Security Forum in Warsaw, Poland.
What are the implications of the revisions to the nuclear doctrine that President Putin of Russia announced last week?
We don't really know, but I would rather see it as a sign of weakness. If President Putin had confidence in the ability of his conventional forces to achieve the aims that he has set for them in his aggression against Ukraine, he wouldn't need to do this. Does it mean that he's intending to use nuclear weapons? Not necessarily. But he wants to remind us of the fact that it's in his arsenal, and I think we know that already.
What are the implications of the victory of the far-right forces in the Austrian elections?
Well, it is quite worrying, I have to say. The far-right Freedom Party is really far-right and really pro-Russian. They got 29% of the vote, a record for them. And whether they will be able to form a government, I think the other parties will try to form a government against them. I think it's going to take a couple of months to see whether that succeeds or not. But the worrying thing is, of course, that there's a risk of the formation of a far-right, nationalist, more neutralistic, you could say, bloc in Central Europe. We already have the Hungarians under Viktor Orbán nearby. We have Bratislava with the government there. There's an election coming up in the Czech Republic next year. So I'm not entirely comfortable, to put it mildly, with what we have seen coming out of the Austrian election.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy addresses the 79th United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 25, 2024.
Zelensky vies for the world’s attention at UN, as Russia resets its nuclear red line
UNITED NATIONS – When Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the sparsely populated United Nations General Assembly Hall on Wednesday, he cast Russia’s war in Ukraine as a threat to Europe and beyond – warning of the rising threat of nuclear disaster, and the potential for the war to spread into Eastern Europe. The GA’s empty chairs reflected the problem Zelensky’s speech sought to address: As the situation in the Middle East spirals out of control, much of the world’s attention has turned away from Ukraine.
The 46-year-old leader condemned Russia’s targeting of his country’s infrastructure grid, saying that “80% of its energy system [is] gone.” He said the attacks have not only exposed millions of Ukrainians to a brutal winter without electricity, but also put Ukraine’s nuclear power plants at risk. Zelensky accused Putin of trying to disconnect its Zaporizhzia nuclear plant from the power grid, putting Europe one drone strike away from “nuclear disaster” where “radiation will not respect state orders.”
Zelensky has used this week’s trip to outline a “victory plan” – a plan that includes more money and firing US-made long-range weapons deep inside Russia to strengthen Ukraine’s position enough to force Russia to the negotiating table. Aware that battlefield help won’t be enough to force Vladimir Putin to cut a deal over Ukraine’s future, Zelensky has also asked the West to use economic, political, and diplomatic pressure to force Russia to the bargaining table.
Biden and Zelensky will meet to discuss the plan on Thursday. In anticipation, Russia updated its nuclear doctrine on Wednesday to say it should be able to use nuclear weapons if attacked by a state backed by nuclear power, although this “red-line” rhetoric may just be meant to deter Biden from granting Ukraine use of the long-range weapons.
It’s tempting to ignore yet another Russian threat of retaliation. After all, Ukrainian troops have invaded and now occupy about 500 square miles of Russian land. If Ukraine’s surprise invasion of Russia and the inability of Russian forces so far to push them out hasn’t provoked a deadly escalation from Moscow, what Russian action should Western governments fear?
But the Kremlin spokesman stands on firmer ground in arguing that it’s “impossible to force Russia into peace.” Putin has staked all of his personal political credibility on the restoration of Russian control over Ukraine, and he has reason to believe Russia can still win the war.
Today, there’s no evidence that Putin faces any internal threat to his leadership. But negotiating away land he claims is part of Russia could expose the aging president to challenges from within Russia’s political and economic elite.
Speakers including Dr. Radha Plumb, Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer, U.S. Department of Defense (third from left), discuss responsible AI use in a plenary session at the Responsible AI in the Military domain (REAIM) summit in Seoul, South Korea, September 9, 2024.
China’s nuclear noncommitment
Today, global delegates to the Responsible AI in the Military Domain Summit in Seoul adopted a non-binding agreement promising to keep nuclear weapons solely in human control — and not under the control of artificial intelligence.
60 of the 100 countries in attendance adopted the “blueprint for action,” a pledge to “maintain human control and involvement for all actions … concerning nuclear weapons employment.”
Notably, China did not sign the agreement. The White House previously disclosed that China has refused to commit to limiting the decision-making around nukes to humans. “Our position has been publicly clear for a long time: We don’t think that autonomous systems should be getting near any decision to launch a nuclear weapon. That’s a long-stated U.S. policy, said US National Security Council Director of Technology Tarun Chhabra earlier this summer. “We think all countries around the world should sign up to that.” (Russia was not invited to the summit due to its invasion of Ukraine.)
Experts previously told GZERO AI that China has signaled to the UN that nuclear weapons should never be used in war and that powerful weapons systems should stay under human control, but Beijing has shied away from official and direct pronouncements on the matter.An unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile launches during an operational test at 2:10 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, U.S., August 2, 2017. Picture taken August 2, 2017.
Washington tries to reassure Beijing over nuclear strategy
The White House on Wednesday tried to ease Beijing’s “serious concerns” over reports that the US is adjusting its nuclear strategy to incorporate more of a focus on East Asia. The US National Security Council said it “is not a response to any single entity, country, nor threat” and that North Korea and Russia factor into the shift.
China’s foreign ministry said “the United States has constantly stirred up the so-called China nuclear threat theory in recent years.” China objects because it has always maintained a no-first-use policy with its nuclear weapons, and its arsenal is small compared to Washington’s 3,700 warheads.
Still, China has been arming – the Pentagon estimated last year that Beijing now has 500 warheads and may reach 1,000 by 2030. But from China’s point of view, that’s just playing catch up, says Eurasia Group’s Jeremy Chan. “Beijing sees US rhetoric about arms control as an effort to lock in the Chinese arsenal at a level that is still a fraction of Washington’s,” he explained. “They want to play for more time.”
US and Chinese interests may not be entirely misaligned. Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly told Russian President Vladimir Putin, for example,to quit threatening to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine when the two met in Moscow last year, and Chan notes that nuclear proliferation is one of the few issues where Beijing won’t cover for North Korea.