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** Russia likely laughing off Trump's 'open door' to Tomahawks ([link removed])
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By Jennifer Kavanagh on Sep 30, 2025 12:05 am
Featured Image When asked on Sunday if reports that President Donald Trump was considering providing Ukraine with Tomahawk cruise missiles were true, Vice President J.D. Vance ([link removed]) left the door open.
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** Trump offers Gaza plan that will please no one but Trump ([link removed])
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By Annelle Sheline on Sep 29, 2025 05:29 pm
Featured Image During his joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, President Donald Trump announced a new plan that he said is “getting everything solved in the Middle East.”
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** Dem-aligned think tank blasted for Blinken appointment to board ([link removed])
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By Connor Echols on Sep 29, 2025 05:22 am
Featured Image A human rights organization is demanding answers about why the Center for American Progress — an influential center left think tank — awarded a board seat to former Secretary of State Antony Blinken despite his alleged complicity in war crimes in Gaza, according to an open letter shared exclusively with Responsible Statecraft.
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** Israel wins TikTok ([link removed])
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By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos on Sep 27, 2025 10:55 am
Featured Image A year ago, powerful critics in Congress and the tech world were complaining that TikTok was promoting anti-Israel messaging and were suggesting it needed to be shut down ([link removed]) .
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** Trump's latest line on Ukraine isn't a 'shift,' it's a hand-off ([link removed])
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By Eldar Mamedov on Sep 26, 2025 12:05 am
Featured Image U.S. President Donald Trump’s rhetorical shift ([link removed]) on Ukraine isn’t a call to arms. But it’s a dangerous attempt to outsource escalation to Europe. And it’s a strategy that could easily reverse again.
Trump’s recent social media pronouncement ([link removed]) on Ukraine, following his meeting ([link removed]) with President Volodymyr Zelensky, appears to be a stunning about-face. Just days ago, the core of his “peace plans” was the grim realpolitik of forcing Kyiv to accept territorial losses. Now, he declares Russia a “paper tiger” and seems to endorse fighting to Ukraine’s “final victory”, including “winning back” all the territories it lost to Russia since 2014.
But a closer look reveals this isn’t a genuine shift toward a hawkish policy. Instead, it’s the unveiling of a profoundly dangerous strategy. To understand it, we must see it as the outcome of a successful influence campaign ([link removed]) by Kyiv, its European partners and their allies within the U.S. administration, who, after Trump's meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska, faced a clear set of objectives.
Their minimum task was to prevent Trump from applying intense pressure on Zelensky to accept Putin’s terms for a peace settlement, most notably Russia’s territorial gains in Donbas and Ukraine’s permanent neutrality (i.e. no NATO membership). More ambitiously, they sought to convince Trump to return to a Biden-era policy of direct aid. And their maximum, albeit distant, task was to gain approval for high-risk actions like a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
Faced with these pressures, Trump had three broad options: pressure Zelensky (facing major resistance from Ukraine, Europe and powerful forces ([link removed]) within the U.S.), pressure Putin (with limited leverage and high escalation risks), or essentially “wash his hands” of direct responsibility.
The latest events show that Kyiv and Europe have achieved their minimum goal. Trump is not pressuring Zelensky to accept Putin’s terms. Moreover, he has effectively taken the issue of a rapid ceasefire off the table, a major win for leaders who fear a negotiated compromise. They now have a “green light” from the American president himself to continue fighting.
However, this shift is almost entirely rhetorical. While the tone has swung from advocating a deal to cheering for victory, the underlying substantive policy — American disengagement — has remained remarkably consistent. Before, he argued that Ukraine should cede land ([link removed]) because the U.S. should not be involved. Now, he argues Ukraine can win back its land because the U.S. should not be involved, except as a merchant. The core “America First” principle of avoiding costly entanglements is unchanged; only the public justification for it has flipped to accommodate political pressures.
This disengagement is articulated not just by Trump’s transactional arms-sales approach, but by his key officials. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently laid bare ([link removed]) the doctrine’s stark logic, dismissing fears of Russian expansion by stating, “All I hear from you is that Putin wants to march into Warsaw. The one thing I'm sure of is that Putin isn't marching into Boston.”
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** After Israel's strike in Qatar, is Turkey next? ([link removed])
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By Sajjad Safaei on Sep 25, 2025 12:05 am
Featured Image Israel’s recent strike on Qatar, a major non-NATO ally of the United States, has given rise to the question of whether Turkey, a NATO ally of the United States, may be Israel’s next target. While several parallels between Qatar and Turkey suggest that an Israeli assault on Turkey is not entirely impossible, a number of factors, chiefly Israel’s own intimate reliance on Turkey, are likely to act as a strong deterrent against a future Israeli strike on Turkey.
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