Restaurants use mood lighting to curate a vibe, but not everyone agrees on what constitutes bright enough. 

​Restaurants use mood lighting to curate a vibe, but not everyone agrees on what constitutes bright enough. 

Foreign Affairs

Neither Ukraine Nor Russia Want to Stop the War

Walking away remains the best option ahead for the current U.S. administration. 

Credit: Ministry of Defense Ukraine

In April 2022, the U.S. and Ukraine were on a routine intelligence-sharing call. The U.S. notified the Ukrainians that Russian capital ships, including the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, a heavy cruiser named the Moskva, the first of its class, were hulking menacingly along the Odessa coastline. The Ukrainians hastily said thank you and bailed out of the call. 

The next news, according to the New York Times, left the Biden administration angry and almost in a state of panic. Moskva was sunk by two sea-hugging Neptune missiles. “The Biden administration also didn’t want Ukraine to attack ‘a potent symbol of Russian power,’ highlighting the delicate balance Washington has maintained since the war’s outset—arming Kyiv while trying to avert a broader confrontation with Moscow,” per the report. Any chance of negotiation with Russia was gone. 

Two years on, the dynamic remains similar. A day before the peace delegations were supposed to meet in Istanbul, the Ukrainians did one of the most daring special-ops in the history of modern warfare. Truck-borne small drone swarms attacked the Russian strategic bomber fleet deep in Russia. The news is fluid, but what we know so far suggests that this operation was apparently planned for over a year. The Ukrainians did not involve the Americans in planning, nor did they inform Americans before the attack. The timing was primed for a day ahead of the talks, thereby destroying the chances of any negotiation by obvious implication. 

By all means, this was an impressive operation. The logistical challenges alone would be enough to marvel. Getting trucks of swarm weapons inside Russia, avoiding the Russian intel, border, and security net, stalking the Russian strategic bomber fleet (which isn’t static, but moves from base to base), analyzing satellite data, destroying a symbolic, if not preponderant, chunk of Russian second-strike options (the current estimate is 11 long-range bombers), and then destroying the trucks through remote detonation: This was no small feat. 

It seems plausible that the Ukrainians had satellite operational data from some Western country, if not from the U.S.; open-source tracking tools generally operate on a lag and do not provide accurate real-time data. If the U.S. knew about this op, then that means it is a cobelligerent in this operation. If the U.S. didn’t, then the American administration just received a slap to the face for all its help to Ukraine. Notably, there were no official comments from either the U.S. or Russia on this operation. Both sides seem to know how much of the talks are at stake, and how many stakeholders want to scuttle those talks. 

It is best left to better minds than me to analyze whether the operations were strategically successful. Jennifer Kavanagh, for example, rightly falls on the pessimist side:

Coming on the eve of peace talks, Donald Trump—who was reportedly not warned ahead of time—is likely to see the attack as a direct violation of his demands that both sides find a way to end the war. Washington will be spooked by Ukraine’s willingness to target a piece of Russia’s nuclear triad without consultation, given the risks of nuclear escalation such a decision brings with it. Any Ukrainian victory will be Pyrrhic, however. The loss of some of its strategic long-range bombers, if confirmed, would undoubtedly be a blow to Russia’s military force and will be especially concerning to Moscow given the role the aircraft play in the country’s nuclear deterrent. But the costs imposed by Ukraine’s attack will not prevent Russia from continuing its war of attrition on Ukraine’s eastern front, or force it to back off its campaign of drone and missile strikes on Ukrainian cities.

I doubt the Ukrainians did this to inflict a massive blow to Russia. Comparisons to Pearl Harbor among certain excitable media accounts fail on the merits: Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor very nearly decapitated the entire Pacific fleet of the U.S. The U.S., in return, nuked Japan at the end of the war. I am not sure either the comparison, or the policy prediction, holds true in this case. A better explanation is that the Ukrainians conducted this op as a show of force and a gambit. The Russians cannot just stop this conflict without a symbolic victory. And the Ukrainians don’t want the conflict to stop and want to scuttle the peace talks. The timing of the strike, the subversive elements, the discretion and lack of communication with the patron state, all points to that conclusion. 

Yours truly suggested previously that there’s no better option than walking away from this war. As President Donald Trump said, it is not our war, and as Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have both hinted, there’s a limit to how much political capital one should spend on this peripheral conflict. With Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s strategic bombers and Russia’s maximalist demands for a truce, it is more than clear neither side wants the conflict to end. One side, however, is dependent on the U.S. for money, intel, and weapons. Its war aims differ from those of its hegemonic protector.

Ukrainians laudably wish to recover their lands and defend their home. Americans want to avoid a nuclear war with Russia. These are ultimately incompatible strategic instincts and policy ends. The Americans tried to end this, but, as one sage Indian army general said in 2001, “when two wild bulls want to fight, they carry on regardless.” Trump should listen to his own better angels and step out of this hole. There are easier deals to be had with Iran, North Korea, and Greenland; those are how he can establish a legacy. 

The post Neither Ukraine Nor Russia Want to Stop the War appeared first on The American Conservative.

Congress

Musk Disappointed With ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’

Elon labels legislation a “disgusting abomination.”

There’s an old Washington saying that we’ll sanitize here since this isn’t the LBJ presidential library. It is better to have someone inside the tent urinating outward than outside the tent urinating inward.

Elon Musk seems ready to illustrate this adage yet again while testing exactly how big a tent the Republican Party of 2025 really is. Mere days after departing as a special government employee running the Department of Government Efficiency, Musk has said the White House-backed, House-passed “Big, Beautiful Bill” is actually a “disgusting abomination.”

The former DOGE chief hadn’t exactly hidden his feelings about the Republican reconciliation package while working for President Donald Trump. “I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful,” Musk told CBS News in his waning days at the White House, “but I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion.”

But the post-DOGE volley seemed like an escalation. It comes as fiscal hawks in the Senate stand ready to pick the bill apart and individual Republican lawmakers in the House are starting to find new faults after voting for it. It passed the lower chamber by a narrow 215-214 margin.

Prior to stepping down, Musk was the primary representative of small-government conservatism in the Trump White House. He is something of a convert to techno-libertarianism and now displays the appropriate zeal.

Trump himself has never really run as much of a government-cutter, though he has made overtures to voters who are. He has pledged to protect the biggest entitlement programs from cuts. Many of his other campaign promises involve the effective use of government power. Policies championed by many of his allies, both inside and outside of the administration, would require at least partially moving on from the Goldwater-Reagan approach to the size and scope of government.

Yet at the same time, the Trump economic policy as described by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is a fusion of supply-side and economic nationalism. As Pat Buchanan advised in 1996, “Marry the growth agenda of Ronald Reagan to the America First philosophy of the four men whose faces are carved on Mount Rushmore — and the future is ours.”

To do that, Trump needs his tax cuts renewed. The big, beautiful bill is a vehicle to do that. But to get it through a House where Republicans now rely on blue-state lawmakers for their majority, concessions had to be made on the SALT deduction caps compared to the original 2017 tax cuts. 

Trump has also added novelties like no taxes on tips or overtime which have the potential to expand the constituency for tax cuts in a way consistent with the Republican Party’s more working-class base. This is no longer just a debate over the top marginal income tax rate, which Bill Clinton largely won, not long after George H.W. Bush of “read my lips” fame abandoned ship.

But the SALT compromise and the new tax cuts are revenue losers that lack a strong supply-side rationale. That might not be a problem if it weren’t for growing budget deficits and spiking Treasury bond yields. 

A rare thing late-period Dick Cheney seemed to get right was his observation that “deficits don’t matter,” at least not politically. Bush 41 paid an electoral price for letting them (and taxes) increase as about a third of his coalition abandoned him in his 1992 reelection bid, and Clinton reaped a windfall for reducing the deficit and eventually balancing the budget alongside a Republican Congress.

But there has now been a budget deficit every year for almost a quarter century and it has been above $1 trillion since fiscal year 2020. Musk’s complaint is that there is no improvement on that horizon. “I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” he said before departing the White House.

Musk appears to still get along well with Trump himself, despite some mutual disillusionment about the DOGE process. But his recent protests could embolden fiscal conservatives in the House and Senate, such as Kentucky Republicans Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Thomas Massie.

Even Musk hinges his criticism of current deficit spending on pork-barrel projects and waste, DOGE’s ostensible top targets, rather than the biggest long-term drivers of the debt. His public skepticism comes after the House’s passage of the bill, whatever its merits, demonstrated a noticeable improvement in Trump’s ability to herd elephants on Capitol Hill compared to the first term.

Now Trump must rescue his tax cuts from deficits that arose from decades of political leaders in both parties urinating down our legs while pretending it is raining. 

The post Musk Disappointed With ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs

Europe’s Woke Trade Policies Threaten Transatlantic Ties 

The EU is looking to impose progressive values on developing nations.

Credit: Alexandros Michailidis/Shutterstock

As the U.S. and Europe struggle to reset trade relations, secure greater European defense spending within NATO, and find a consensus on protecting free speech, a new woke trade treaty between the European Union and developing countries is set to worsen the discord in transatlantic relations.

The European Union (EU) handles trade issues for its 27 member states and 450 million citizens. With only 5.6 percent of the world’s population but a GDP of $20 trillion, the EU’s share of global trade is larger than that of the United States.

Trade between Europe and countries in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean reached nearly $125 billion in 2023. Now, the EU’s new treaty with countries in these regions—known as the Samoa Agreement—is intended to establish a more expansive relationship with the developing world that goes far beyond market access.

The EU describes this treaty as “the overarching framework” for Europe’s relations with 79 countries and about 2 billion people—which would constitute the largest trading block in the world. (It was signed in 2023 but will not enter into force until it has been ratified by two-thirds of the 79 countries in the Organization of African, Caribbean, and Pacific States.)

Sensing an opportunity, ideologues within the EU bureaucracy have weaponized the agreement to pursue their progressive social agenda.

Thanks to them, this super treaty will compel culturally traditional countries to legally commit to European priorities on abortion and radical gender ideology under the guise of protecting human rights. It commits developing countries to “respect, protect, fulfil and promote all human rights, be they civil, political, economic, social or cultural.”

This is not the language of your typical trade deal. In international parlance, “economic, social and cultural rights” include housing, healthcare, social security, and a right to participate in cultural life.

The Samoa agreement also requires state parties to combat “hate speech and hate crimes, xenophobia and related intolerance.” Of course, as Vice President J.D. Vance noted in his speech in Munich this February, these kinds of hate speech laws are being used today in Europe to stifle political speech.

As anti-progressive populist pressures grow, especially in Germany and France, Europe’s establishment parties have doubled down.

Last year, France amended its constitution to include a right to abortion. Soon after, the new center-left Polish government sought the full legalization of abortion. They failed—but the EU bureaucracy nonetheless circumvented member states’ primacy over domestic social issues by codifying abortion as a fundamental right.

That issue nearly derailed the signing of the treaty.

Most countries in the developing world maintain strict restrictions on abortion, which is not among the human rights codified in international law. But the Samoa Agreement repeatedly references the need for parties to commit to “sexual and reproductive health and rights.” The treaty doesn’t define this term, but the UN and its various organs routinely use it to encompass abortion.

Clearly, this trade deal is a vehicle for Europe to impose these norms on the developing world. It would both usurp the sovereign right of these countries to determine their own domestic policies on life, family, and religious values, and require them to vote with the EU in international fora.

Once ratified, the treaty would also isolate the U.S. and block current efforts by the Trump administration to strike bilateral trade agreements based on “U.S. values, sovereignty, and security.” 

And all this at a time when the transatlantic rift on social issues is widening.

Just days into President Donald Trump’s second administration, Secretary of State Marco Rubio renewed the United States’ membership in the Geneva Consensus Declaration (GCD), rejoining 34 other countries in a commitment to promote women’s health, defend human life at all stages, and strengthen the family.

But the Samoa Agreement runs diametrically opposed to the GCD. Worse, it will force GCD parties to terminate their membership in the pro-life entity to protect their access to Europe’s massive markets.

This could also jeopardize future U.S. foreign aid programs. If recipient countries are bound by the EU’s embrace of sexual rights—now broadly defined to include rights based on sexual orientation and gender identity—they will likely be excluded from aid based on the new anti-woke policies of the Trump administration.

After initially refusing to sign the treaty because of its abortion and LGBT requirements, conservative EU members Hungary and Poland relented. Today, the only holdouts are Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, and South Sudan (though some governments that have signed are getting pushback from their citizens).

Fortunately, all is not lost.

Led by Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, conservative forces in Europe are winning stronger representation within EU institutions as right-populists who reject progressive extremism gain power in member states. And Trump’s reelection has given them a powerful ally in resisting Europe’s neocolonial imposition of social policies.

As the White House pursues trade negotiations with the EU, it should demand that the Samoa Agreement’s socially progressive obligations be terminated—we can’t allow the creation of a massive anti-U.S. woke trading behemoth.

The post Europe’s Woke Trade Policies Threaten Transatlantic Ties  appeared first on The American Conservative.