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Vox
4 days ago
- Politics
- Vox
Is Israel trying to destroy Iran's nukes — or topple its government?
is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He is the author of the 2018 book, Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood , an exploration of border conflicts, unrecognized countries, and changes to the world map. Smoke rises from locations targeted in Tehran amid the third day of Israel's waves of strikes against Iran, on June 15, 2025. Zara/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images Iran's state broadcaster, which was bombed mid-broadcast by Israel on Monday, was many things to many people. It was the employer of hundreds of journalists, some of whom were injured in the attack, prompting protests from press freedom organizations. It was also the propaganda arm of a repressive regime, which has broadcast the 'confessions' of hundreds of the regime's opponents over the years, many believed to have been extracted by torture. What it was not is an integral component of Iran's nascent nuclear program. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his country had 'no choice' but to launch airstrikes to stop Iran's imminent rush to acquire a nuclear bomb. But it has also been apparent that this was the floor, not the ceiling, of Israel's ambitions. 'From the beginning, it was apparent, based on the targeting and Israeli public messaging, that this had the potential to be something much more than just a counter-proliferation operation,' said Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Retired Gen. Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel's national security council with close ties to the current government, told reporters on Monday that regime change was not the 'explicit' goal of the Israeli campaign, which is focused on setting back Iran's nuclear and missile programs, but added, 'I cannot hide that this is the implicit goal or dream of hope of the Israeli government.' Could Iran's regime really fall? The Iranian regime has clearly been weakened by sanctions and the damage dealt to its regional proxy network over the past year. It has few allies, the ones it does have aren't doing much to help, and recent nationwide protests show that there is widespread and deep opposition. But that doesn't mean that the regime is about to collapse after four decades in power. So far, there hasn't been much concerted anti-regime protest since the strikes began, not surprising given that thousands are fleeing the capital city, Tehran. Abdullah Mohtadi, the exiled leader of a Kurdish Iranian opposition party, told Vox that the airstrikes had caused 'mixed feelings' for his movement's supporters. While few will mourn the death of senior commanders who had been involved in crackdowns against peaceful protesters, regime opponents are also fearful about the destruction and strife the war could unleash, especially if it continues for a long time. 'War itself is not a good thing, but sometimes it presents a window of opportunity. I hope this will be the case this time,' Mohtadi said. Other Iranian opposition figures have explicitly rejected Netanyahu's calls for an uprising, saying the bombing doesn't help their movement. It's difficult to generalize about public opinion in any country of 90 million people, much less one where speaking out against the government can be dangerous, noted Ellie Geranmayeh, senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, but she said there was a risk of Israel's bombing provoking a 'rally around the flag' effect for disaffected Iranians. 'There is very little love from the Iranian population for the ruling elite,' she said. 'But the more they are seeing pictures of hospitals under attack, civilian deaths rising, state infrastructure, like oil, gas, electricity being hit, sooner or later, public opinion will shift.' Does America want another regime change war in the Middle East? Still, if overthrowing the Islamic Republic, not just halting its nuclear program, is Netanyahu's dream, that changes the stakes for the Trump administration given that Israel is fairly explicitly hoping to directly draw the US military into the conflict. Regime change in Iran had been an implicit goal of Trump's first administration, which pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal, applied 'maximum pressure sections,' and authorized the assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the second most powerful figure in the regime. But until just a few days ago, it appeared that the new Trump administration was different. Hawks like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were gone, replaced by America Firsters who argued the US should either be more restrained in using military force abroad, or that it should shift its focus from high-risk, low-reward engagements in the Middle East to the more important superpower conflict with China. The Republican Party, it appeared, had turned the page from the George W. Bush era. In a speech in Saudi Arabia in May, Trump condemned the 'neo-cons' and 'nation builders' who he said had 'wrecked far more nations than they built…intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.' This Trump administration was perfectly willing to go behind Israel's back to cut deals with Iranian-backed proxies like the Houthis and Hamas as well as negotiate with Iran itself on a new nuclear agreement. Even after Israel's airstrikes started, and Trump belatedly embraced them, he still expressed hope that the Iranians would return to the negotiating table. On Tuesday, however, Trump said he was seeking a 'real end' to the conflict and might give up on diplomacy entirely, hinting vaguely that something 'much bigger' than a ceasefire is in the works. He has called for the Iranian government's 'UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!' and suggested that Khamenei could still be targeted. Now, longtime regime change advocates — like Trump's first-term national security adviser John Bolton and Sen. Lindsey Graham — are coming out of the woodwork and urging the US to join Israel's war, with Graham telling Fox News, 'Wouldn't the world be better off if the ayatollahs went away and were replaced by something better? Wouldn't Iran be better off?' Trump appears to have turned on antiwar supporters like 'kooky Tucker Carlson,' while Vice President JD Vance, who was warned in the past that a war in Iran could spark 'World War III,' issued a long statement saying that the focus should remain on Iran's nuclear program. What might regime change look like? In his tweet, Vance noted that Americans 'are right to be worried about foreign entanglement after the last 25 years of idiotic foreign policy.' The chaos that followed the US-backed toppling of autocratic governments in Afghanistan, Iran, and Libya looms over this conflict, as do Israel's bloody occupations of southern Lebanon and more recently Gaza. It's not an inspiring track record. Eiland, the retired Israeli general, was more optimistic, suggesting that while Iranians were unlikely to rise up while bombs are falling, the operation could make such an uprising more likely down the road. 'Seventy to 80 percent of the people are not only against the regime, they have a very, very pro-Western approach,' he said. 'So it will be relatively easy for these people to create a real distinguished and successful society again, but only after they manage to get rid of the existing regime.' The hope for Israel may be that regime change would look less like Iraq after 2003 or Libya after 2011 than Syria after last year's overthrow of Bashar al-Assad. Though that hasn't quite ushered in complete peace or democracy, there's been far less instability and bloodshed than many feared following the fall of one of the world's most repressive regimes. On the other hand, that outcome came only after a 13-year war that killed more than half a million people and resulted in one of the world's largest refugee crises and the rise of ISIS. Ali Vaez, Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group, said a more realistic outcome might look more like either Syria after the initial uprising of 2011, or Iraq following the 1991 Gulf War. 'You might have a weakened central government that loses control over some parts of its territory, but the regime itself will be entrenched, and even if it's decaying,' he said. None of these outcomes are foreordained. Trump's stance on the war has shifted on a dime in recent days and could shift again. Trump's restraint-oriented advisers may have lost some influence, but wealthy governments across the Persian Gulf and major oil companies may also be wary about a long war that could put them in the crosshairs. Trump has traditionally been more comfortable with short, overwhelming military actions — like the Soleimani strike, or the strikes against Syria in 2017 — than long, drawn-out wars, which this very well could become. 'It could be years of instability, and by the time he leaves the White House, that war would not be over,' said Alex Vatanka, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. 'All I can tell you is that this regime is hated by its people, but also that the US and Israel don't have a good track record in nation building.'
Vox
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Vox
Will the US get drawn into the Israel-Iran war?
is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He is the author of the 2018 book, Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood , an exploration of border conflicts, unrecognized countries, and changes to the world map. In announcing Israel's strikes against Iran's military leadership and nuclear program last night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the case that Israel had 'no choice but to act, and act now' in response to recent advances in Iran's capabilities that put his country at risk of a 'nuclear holocaust.' It's far from clear that the Trump administration shared Netanyahu's sense of urgency. President Donald Trump waved off Israeli plans for a strike in April, amid ongoing efforts to negotiate a new deal over Tehran's nuclear program. Just hours before the attack was launched, Trump still seemed committed to the diplomatic path, saying he would 'rather that [the Israelis] don't go in in order not to ruin it.' One of the biggest questions in the days to come — and perhaps the one with the highest stakes for Israel — is whether Trump will come to embrace the war he publicly opposed. Initially, reporting on the lead-up to the attack suggested that the Trump administration was aware the attack was coming but did little to stop it. The first high-level US response to the strikes, from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was relatively noncommittal, stating that the Israelis 'believe this action was necessary' but that the US was 'not involved in strikes against Iran.' On Friday morning, however, Trump seemed more enthusiastic about the strikes, posting that he had warned Iranian leaders of the consequences of making a deal but that they 'couldn't get it done.' He added, 'the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it.' This appears to be a case of Trump associating himself after the fact with what appears to be a remarkably successful military operation. The hope in the Trump administration seems to be that the Israeli operation will force Iran to make concessions at the negotiating table. Trump urged Iranian leaders to take a deal 'BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,' and US officials reportedly still hoped that planned talks in Oman on Sunday will still go ahead. A meeting on Sunday, at least, seems unlikely. Iran has threatened retaliation for the strikes and made clear that it doesn't believe Washington's disavowals of involvement. Netanyahu's government is also clearly hoping for a more active US role. 'The president seems to still hope that his preference for a diplomatic solution can be salvaged,' said Nimrod Novik, a former foreign policy adviser to the Israeli government. 'Few in the political-security establishment here share that hope.' He added: 'From an Israeli vantage point, it seems that the better the operation looks, the more Trump wants to own it.' The question in the days to come is just how long the US will stay on the sidelines. How the American role in the conflict could escalate According to the New York Times, the Israeli attack plan that Trump rejected in April, 'would have required U.S. help not just to defend Israel from Iranian retaliation, but also to ensure that an Israeli attack was successful, making the United States a central part of the attack itself.' The conventional wisdom has long been that a military strike to destroy or seriously degrade Iran's nuclear enrichment capability would require US involvement: Iran's key enrichment sites are located in fortified facilities deep underground, and destroying them would require heavy bunker-buster bombs. Israel doesn't have those bombs or the heavy bombers required to carry them, but the US does. But that's not the approach Israel took, at least initially. Analysts say Israel does not appear to have struck the most heavily fortified compound at Fordow, or its nuclear site at Isfahan. A third key nuclear enrichment site, Natanz, sustained only light damage. Instead, Israel's strikes targeted Iran's top leadership, including the commander in chief of its military and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and prominent nuclear scientists. Several military bases around Tehran were hit, as well as air defense systems. 'This was not a campaign against Iranian nuclear facilities,' said Nicole Grajewski, an expert on the Iranian nuclear program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 'This was a campaign against Iranian command and control and leadership.' This was, however, just the opening salvo of a campaign that Netanyahu said 'will continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat.' The operation's aims could very well expand. 'This is day one,' noted Raphael Cohen, a military analyst at the RAND Corporation. 'On day 20, day 40, day 60, once everything drags on as stockpiles dwindle, that's when we're going to start to see to what extent Israel needs the United States.' How will Iran respond? Iran fired at least 100 drones at Israel on Friday, which, so far, appear to have been intercepted without causing any damage. Notably, it has not yet fired ballistic missiles, its most potent long-range threat. The Iranian leadership is likely still reeling from the losses it sustained. Its capacity to respond is likely also hampered by Israel's success over the past year and a half against Iran's network of proxies across the Middle East. Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militia that was once the most powerful of these proxies, but was decimated by last year's pager bombings, has been notably quiet so far, in contrast to the wide-ranging rocket barrage it launched immediately after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. Iran fired missile barrages at Israel twice last year, first in April in response to the bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, and a second, much larger barrage in October in response to the killing of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders in Tehran. Neither caused extensive damage, though in the October strikes, Israeli air defenses were overwhelmed in some places, suggesting that a larger strike could cause serious damage. Iran may have as many as 2,000 ballistic missiles at its disposal, and Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff reportedly warned senators last week that Iranian retaliation could cause a 'mass casualty event.' 'In October, you saw more advanced ballistic missiles being used, but not like the full suite of Iranian ballistic missiles,' Grajewski told Vox. She also noted that during both strikes last year, Israel needed international support to successfully repel those attacks, notably help from the US military in shooting down missiles as well as intelligence support from a previously unlikely alliance of Arab countries sharing intelligence. Though the Trump administration was perfectly willing to cut a quick deal with Yemen's Houthi rebels, despite the group continuing to periodically launch missiles and drones at Israel, a massive attack of the type Witkoff warned is a different story. Israeli policymakers are likely counting on the Trump administration to assist in mounting the kind of multilayered defense that the US did under Joe Biden last year. Could Iran attack Americans? Iranian leaders are plainly not buying US disavowals of involvement in Israel's operation. Military commanders had warned that US forces in the Middle East could be exposed to attack in retaliation for such a strike. In the days leading up to the attack, the US partially evacuated its embassy in Baghdad and authorized the departure of personnel and families from other sites in the region due to that risk. Iran has generally been very wary about taking steps that could draw the US into a direct conflict, preferring to act through proxies. This would suggest a direct strike on US facilities or a drastic move likely blocking the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, which could cause a spike in global energy prices, is unlikely. Attacks by one of Iran's proxy militias in Iran, or a resumption of strikes against US ships by the Houthis, seem somewhat more likely. On the other hand, we may simply be in uncharted waters where the previous rules of restraint don't apply. The Iranian government will almost certainly feel it has to mount some significant response, if only for its own credibility. There have already been some reports of civilian casualties–if those increase, the need to respond will only grow. For Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 'there's a personal element,' said Alex Vatanka, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. 'How do you get yourself out of the situation without being entirely humiliated? … Is he going to do what Qaddafi did and give up his nuclear program, or is he going to say, you know, what, to hell with it, I'd rather die. I'd rather seek martyrdom. It remains to be seen.' How much has Trump changed? Khamenei isn't the only leader whose motives are something of a mystery at the moment. During his first term, Trump authorized the strike that killed senior Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani, a major provocation, but also called off a planned strike on Iranian soil due to concerns about escalation. During his second term, he has been surprisingly unconcerned about coordinating with Israel — cutting deals with the Houthis as well as launching nuclear talks with Iran that Netanyahu was highly skeptical of from the start. His administration this time includes some notably less hawkish voices when it comes to Iran, such as Vice President JD Vance, who has warned against letting Israel drag the US into a war, and described it as a scenario that could 'balloon into World War III.' In 24 hours, Trump has gone from publicly opposing an Israeli strike to taking at least partial credit for it. Netanyahu, who has been advocating an operation like this for years, is likely hoping that continued military success will prompt Trump to abandon his hopes of a big, beautiful deal and join the fight.
Vox
06-06-2025
- Business
- Vox
Why Trump probably can't cut Musk loose
is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He is the author of the 2018 book, Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood , an exploration of border conflicts, unrecognized countries, and changes to the world map. Elon Musk gives a tour to President-elect Donald Trump and lawmakers of the control room before a test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket on November 19, 2024, in Brownsville, up is hard to do — especially when one party is a billionaire with near-unassailable dominance of the nation's ability to launch things into space, and the other is a president who has staked a significant portion of his legacy on wildly ambitious space-based projects. As President Donald Trump and his erstwhile financial backer and former DOGE boss Elon Musk traded blows on social media Thursday, the president at one point posted, 'The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon's Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn't do it!' This prompted Musk to announce that he was decommissioning SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, used to transport astronauts to the International Space Station, though he later backed down from the threat. Trump may soon find, however, that canceling Musk's contracts is a lot harder than selling his Tesla, particularly if he wants to pursue goals like his much-vaunted Golden Dome missile defense project. To get to space, the US needs SpaceX During President Joe Biden's administration, concerns were indeed raised about Musk's lucrative government contracts as well as his access to classified defense information, given his partisan political activities (unusual for a major defense contractor), communications with foreign leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin, and ties to the Chinese government. But as Vox reported last year, unwinding the government's relationship with Musk's companies is a near impossibility right now, particularly when it comes to SpaceX. The company is simply better at launching massive numbers of objects into space than any of its competitors, and it's not close: SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket was responsible for 84 percent of all satellite launches last year, and the constellation of more than 7,000 Starlink communications satellites accounts for around 65 percent of all operational satellites in orbit. The reusable Falcon 9 has become the space launch workhorse of choice for a US military and intelligence community that is ever more dependent on satellites for communications and surveillance. 'If one side or the other severed that relationship, which I don't think is practical, you would very quickly see a backlog of military satellites waiting for launch,' said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow and space defense expert at the American Enterprise Institute. Ambitious plans like the National Reconnaissance Office's ongoing project to launch a constellation of intelligence and surveillance satellites for military use would come to a 'screeching halt,' said Harrison. The US military is also increasingly reliant on SpaceX for mobile internet connectivity via a specialized military-only version of Starlink known as Starshield. For NASA, the situation is, if anything, even more dire, as shown last March when two US astronauts returned, months late, from the International Space Station on a SpaceX Dragon capsule when problems were detected on the Boeing craft that brought them into orbit on its first ever flight. Losing SpaceX 'would basically just end the US participation in the space station,' said David Burbach, an associate professor and space policy expert at the Naval War College. NASA's space shuttle program shut down in 2011. Boeing's Starliner is probably years from being a viable alternative, and going back to relying on Russian rockets — as the US did for nearly a decade between the end of the Space Shuttle and the advent of Dragon — would probably be a tough sell these days. Burbach, speaking in his personal capacity, not as a representative of the US military or war college, said such a break 'would be the kind of thing that could trigger something truly drastic' such as the White House using the Defense Production Act to take control of the program. It's not surprising Musk quickly backed down from the threat. NASA's ongoing Artemis program, which aims to eventually return humans to the Moon and establish a permanent lunar space station, is also heavily dependent on SpaceX's Starship launch vehicle, as are longer term plans for a mission to Mars. These are (or at least were) priorities for the White House: The moon and Mars missions are the only parts of NASA's budget that were increased in the president's recent budget request and the president mentioned planting 'the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars' in his inaugural address. Mars is, to put it mildly, something of a fixation for Musk, and it's hard to imagine an ongoing US program to get there without his involvement. Trump's golden dreams may require Musk A true Trump-Musk rift would also have implications for 'Golden Dome,' the ambitious plan to 'protect the homeland' from ballistic missiles, drones, hypersonic cruise missiles, and other aerial threats. Plans for Golden Dome are still a little vague and no contracts for its construction have been awarded yet, but SpaceX is reportedly a frontrunner to build a constellation of hundreds of new satellites to detect missile launches and determine if they are headed toward the United States, and possibly even intercept them from space. According to Reuters, SpaceX is bidding for portions of the project in partnership with Anduril and Palantir, two other defense tech companies also led by staunch Trump backers. SpaceX's vision for the satellite network reportedly envisions it as a 'subscription service,' in which the government would pay for access, rather than owning the system outright, a model that would presumably give Musk much more leverage over how Golden Dome is developed and deployed. Critics of the program charge that it is little more than a giveaway to Musk and his allies and Democratic members of Congress have raised concerns about his involvement. Advocates for the program, including the Heritage Foundation, which called for investments in ballistic and hypersonic missile defense in its Project 2025 document, have cited SpaceX's success with Starlink and Starshield as proof-of-concept for their argument that deploying a layer of hundreds or thousands of satellites for missile defense is more practical today than it was in the days of President Ronald Reagan's 'Star Wars' project. Even if Golden Dome could be effective, which many doubt, Trump's stated goal of having it operational with 'a success rate close to 100 percent' in 'less than three years' for around $175 billion (the Congressional Budget Office projects half a trillion dollars) is eyebrow-raising. The Pentagon had already backed away from the three-year timeline even before the president began feuding with the only person in the world who's built anything close to this. 'Even for SpaceX, it would be challenging,' said Burbach. 'I don't think any other company has the capability. They're really out in the lead on assembly line satellite capability.' Some experts think Golden Dome could be reconfigured with a greater role for land-based radar and interceptors, but this would almost certainly put it short of Trump's expansive vision. As nuclear expert Ankit Panda succinctly put it on Thursday, 'Golden Dome is cooked.' Is there an alternative? If anyone had a good day on Thursday, it was Musk's fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos. In January, Bezos's space company Blue Origin carried out its first successful launch of New Glenn, a reusable rocket meant to compete with SpaceX's game-changing Falcon for contracts including military launches. The company has also begun launching satellites for its Kuiper communications network, a potential competitor to Starlink. Both projects have suffered from long delays and have a long way to go to catch up with Musk's space behemoth, but it's still presumably good news for the company that their main competitor is no longer literally sleeping feet from the White House. Finding ways to at least encourage competition with Musk, if not cut him loose entirely, would likely have been a priority for a Kamala Harris administration, and may now be one for Trump as well. In response to Vox's questions to the White House about the future of SpaceX's contracts, spokesperson Karoline Leavitt responded in an emailed statement, 'President Trump is focused on making our country great again and passing the One Big Beautiful Bill.' SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.
Vox
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Vox
Ukraine hasn't won over Trump. But it might not need to.
is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He is the author of the 2018 book, Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood , an exploration of border conflicts, unrecognized countries, and changes to the world map. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky meets with President Donald Trump during Pope Francis's funeral on April 26, 2025, at St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican. Office of the President of Ukraine via Getty Images President Donald Trump's seemingly infinite patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin may, in fact, have limits. 'Something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY!' Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform this week, citing the massive recent airstrikes on Ukrainian cities and Putin's desire to conquer 'ALL of Ukraine, not just a piece of it.' Trump also took a vague shot at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ('everything out of his mouth causes problems'), and one could point out that Russia has been striking civilian targets in Ukraine and expressing a desire to snuff out Ukraine's political independence since the very beginning of the war. Trump followed up by telling reporters he is considering imposing new sanctions on Russia and posted, 'if it weren't for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia,' but told reporters at the White House on Wednesday that he is holding off on new sanctions for now. So it's not as if Trump has had a full and sudden change of heart overnight. But consider that, at the end of February, Trump was publicly dressing down Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, blaming Ukraine for starting the war, and halting all US assistance to the Ukrainian war effort. By that standard, Trump's new tone is still one of several developments that add up to a welcome change of pace for Kyiv. Today, Explained Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day, compiled by news editor Sean Collins. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Even if there are no new measures taken to either support Ukraine or punish Russia, and even if the US 'walks away' from efforts to negotiate a ceasefire, as Vice President JD Vance recently threatened, the events since February still amount to a remarkable diplomatic change of fortune for Ukraine — and probably about as good an outcome as Kyiv could reasonably expect from this administration. What hasn't changed: Sanctions, intelligence, and (so far) weapons For Ukraine, where cities are still reeling from some of the largest airstrikes since the beginning of the war, and where supplies of much-needed air defense ammunition are running dangerously low, there's obviously no cause for celebration. Hanna Shelest, a Kyiv-based defense analyst with the Center for European Policy Analysis, told Vox that despite Trump's changing tone on Putin, his ongoing attacks on Zelenskyy (it's unclear exactly what remarks triggered Trump's ire) indicate that 'we are still in a transactional situation. We have still not been able to dramatically change the approach of the US president.' Trump, for all his current frustration, clearly still views the conflict in a way that is much more sympathetic to Russia's interests than Joe Biden or many members of his own party. But in terms of actual material support, not much has actually changed since Trump took office. Because of the time it takes for those contracts to be negotiated and fulfilled, weapons that were ordered in 2022 are only being delivered now. He has frequently suggested he'd be willing to lift sanctions on Russia as part of a ceasefire agreement, but he has not done so, and in fact, has signed executive orders extending the sanctions that Biden imposed. Many of these sanctions could not be lifted without congressional approval. As Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently put it, 'When Vladimir Putin woke up this morning, he had the same set of sanctions on him that he's always had since the beginning of this conflict.' Aside from a week-long pause following the contentious Oval Office meeting, US weapons shipments to Ukraine have continued. In fact, the rate of weapons deliveries actually increased in the early weeks of the Trump administration because of moves the Biden team made to rush aid out the door before leaving office. The intelligence sharing vital to Ukraine's targeting systems has also continued, as has — despite Elon Musk's threats — the Ukrainian military's access to SpaceX's Starlink satellite network. Congress has allocated two types of funding for aid to Ukraine: The first pays for weapons to be transferred to Ukraine for US military stocks. That aid has been almost exhausted, experts say. The second provides funds for Ukraine to buy its own weapons from American manufacturers. Because of the time it takes for those contracts to be negotiated and fulfilled, weapons that were ordered in 2022 are only being delivered now. The last items from contracts signed in 2024 might not be delivered until 2028. The upshot, as Mark Cancian, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, puts it, is that 'the overall military aid being delivered is relatively high and will stay there for quite a while.' This White House and this Congress are very unlikely to allocate new funding for aid to Ukraine, but perhaps others could fill the gap. European governments are reportedly warming to the idea of purchasing weapons from American manufacturers. So far, these governments have preferred to buy from their own companies, but there are a number of systems — such as the all-important Patriot air-defense missiles — that only the US can provide. Ukraine's defense industry is also more self-sufficient than it used to be. The drones that are now inflicting the majority of the casualties on the front lines in Ukraine are increasingly produced in-country by the country's booming autonomous weapons industry. It's even possible that Ukraine may benefit somewhat from a more hands-off American approach. For all that the Biden team made clear it would back Ukraine's war effort for as long as it takes, Ukrainian officials sometimes bristled under what they saw as micromanagement from a White House concerned about the risks of conflict escalation with Russia, particularly when it came to long-range strikes into Russian territory. But according to an announcement from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz this week, allies including the United States have agreed to lift range restrictions on weapons headed to Ukraine, allowing the Ukrainians more freedom to strike targets deep within Russia. What has changed: Minerals and direct talks The two main shifts in US policy that have taken place under Trump have been the US-Ukraine minerals deal and the direct negotiations with Russia. Both have proven less disastrous for Ukraine than they initially appeared. The original version of the minerals deal presented to Ukraine reportedly required the country to hand over hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue from the mining of its critical minerals as repayment for past military aid. The deal Ukraine eventually signed drops that requirement and while it doesn't include the explicit security guarantees Ukraine was hoping for, it at least gives this transactionally minded administration a financial stake in Ukraine's future. As for the ongoing ceasefire talks, Trump overturned two oft-stated principles of the Biden approach: that Russia should be diplomatically isolated and that there would be no negotiations 'about Ukraine without Ukraine.' But ultimately, Ukraine's political position may have been strengthened by the process. Putin has rejected a proposed 30-day ceasefire after Ukraine agreed to one, was a no-show at talks in Istanbul, where Zelenskyy had proposed meeting face-to-face, and has rejected Trump's proposal to have talks mediated by the Vatican. It's much harder for even the most skeptical to argue, as Trump has previously, that the war is only continuing because of Zelenskyy's unwillingness to make a deal. Even Trump has been forced to wonder if Putin is merely 'tapping me along,' engaging minimally in the diplomatic process without abandoning his end goal of subjugating all of Ukraine, not just the disputed regions, by force. How long can the status quo hold? Trump has clearly moved on from the notion that he can end the war in 24 hours and seems to be losing interest in the peace talks entirely. Or as Vance put it, 'We're more than open to walking away.' Much depends on what exactly 'walking away' means. If it means an end to weapons shipments, intelligence sharing, and sanctions on Russia, that would be disastrous for Ukraine, though not necessarily fatal. 'It's not as if we pulled the plug tomorrow, that Ukrainians would just immediately cease to exist, which I think was the administration's assumption when they came in,' said Jeffrey Edmonds, a former White House and Pentagon Russia adviser. 'They thought they had a lot more leverage than they did over both Ukraine and Russia.' (A spokesperson for the White House national security council did not respond to Vox's request for comment.) If Trump merely maintains the status quo — keeps the sanctions that are already in place, continues shipping the weapons that have already been paid for — that might be enough for the Ukrainians to hold the line for at least the coming months. It's true that Russian troops continue to slowly advance, but the rate of advance is already slowing this year, and it loses dozens of casualties per square kilometer. According to one recent estimate, it would take Russia 80 years to conquer all of Ukraine's territory at the current rate. Ukraine's bigger concern may be recruiting enough troops to man the front lines, though its efforts have improved somewhat, US commanders say, and low morale among both troops and civilians as the war drags on with no end in sight. Russia has manpower woes as well as increasing signs of economic distress as it continues to pour money into Ukraine. Trump's tariffs have had the unexpected side-effect of slashing the Russian state's oil revenues.
Vox
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Vox
The return of the nuclear threat
is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He is the author of the 2018 book, Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood , an exploration of border conflicts, unrecognized countries, and changes to the world map. Humanity has lived with nuclear weapons for so long — 80 years, this year — without destroying itself, that we sometimes take them for granted. But there's no guarantee that our run of luck will continue. In fact, the risks are growing and transforming. The recent round of fighting between India and Pakistan, the most serious violence between the two nuclear rivals in decades, is a reminder that the risks of nuclear escalation have not disappeared. But that doesn't mean the risks are exactly the same as they used to be. The 'nuclear age,' can be divided into three parts: The first, from the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945 until the end of the Cold War, was characterized by arms build-ups and the ever-present threat of nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union. The second, a roughly 30-year period after the end of the Cold War, was marked by arms control agreements, a reduction in the threat of nuclear war, and new concerns like nuclear terrorism and proliferation to rogue regimes like North Korea. The third age is just beginning. In his new book, The New Nuclear Age: At the Precipice of Armageddon, leading nuclear security analyst Ankit Panda introduces readers to a new era that began in roughly the mid-2020s. This new era is characterized by renewed tensions between the world's superpowers, the emergence of China as a third major nuclear power, the collapse of Cold War-era arms control treaties, and new and potentially destabilizing technological developments like cyberwar and artificial intelligence. The war in Ukraine, the largest conventional war in decades and one that nuclear threats have loomed over from the start, was the most vivid illustration yet of the dynamics of this new era. In an interview with Vox, Panda, the Stanton senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a widely cited authority on all things nuclear, discussed the dynamics of our new nuclear world and how Donald Trump's return to the White House could raise nuclear risks. When nuclear weapons first appeared, leaders and experts expected that their use would just become routine. They'd be just another tool in the arsenal. That, thankfully, hasn't happened. So is there a case to be made that deterrence, the idea that countries will avoid using weapons because of the risks of retaliation, just works? Are leaders too afraid of the dangers of these weapons to actually use them, and maybe the risks of nuclear war aren't as high as we might think? I wouldn't go that far. The presence of nuclear weapons does induce a degree of caution in national leaders, militaries, and policymakers in general. But I consider myself something of a deterrence pessimist in that I believe deterrence is real, that it has the effects that its practitioners seek, but I'm not assured that deterrence itself can be rendered perfectly safe because rendering deterrence perfectly safe is something of an oxymoron. Deterrence is about the manipulation of useful risk. We endlessly debate what level of risk we should be willing to tolerate when it comes to the practice of nuclear deterrence, but we know from the Cold War that there have been instances of organizational failure and human miscalculation that easily could have led to the use of nuclear weapons. Ultimately, nuclear weapons are a human invention. Nuclear deterrence is an enterprise that requires the involvement of fallible, human organizations. Longer term, making sure that we keep nuclear weapons unused is going to require a lot more active tending of this incredibly complex enterprise that's growing a lot more complicated by the day. This past month, we saw a real-world demonstration of some of the dynamics you write about in the book, in the brief but very intense conflict between India and Pakistan, two nuclear rivals. What do you think that incident tells us about how crises like this are likely to play out in this new nuclear age? I think we can describe what we saw last week between India and Pakistan as the first South Asian nuclear crisis of this third nuclear range. Both countries have tried to rewrite the rules of their mutual coexistence under the nuclear shadow. [Indian Prime Minister Narendra] Modi's government has for years been interested in calling Pakistan's 'nuclear bluff.' It wanted to find ways to inflict punishment on the Pakistanis with military force for what India perceives as state-backed terror, and it did exactly that. I think it's fair to say that what we saw was the most intense multidomain, air-to-air and air-to-ground engagement between two nuclear-armed countries ever. We've never seen anything like this in the nuclear age. Does that imply that India is simply no longer afraid of Pakistan's nuclear deterrent or no longer takes it seriously? India has taken steps to avoid escalation with Pakistan in the past, in part because of nuclear fears, but Modi said in his speech following the end of this most recent conflict that India would no longer give in to what he called 'nuclear blackmail.' I argue in my book that what we call nuclear blackmail is actually just nuclear deterrence. We're simply applying a value judgment to the deterrer: In this case Pakistan, but it's also how Vladimir Putin's nuclear signaling is described in European and American commentary about the war in Ukraine. When it comes to Pakistan's nuclear signaling, it had several audiences. One was, of course, the Indians, and I think this crisis perhaps told the Pakistanis that some of the older assumptions they might have retained about the ways in which India would be deterred are no longer sufficient. The second is the United States. This is what really gave me concern in the early days of the crisis. Traditionally, we in the United States have seen a pressing national interest in preventing India and Pakistan from getting into direct clashes, but this is a very different Washington, and based on the statements from the administration, it wasn't clear that the US saw it as in its interest to get involved. But then whatever the US saw in its intelligence reports changed that pretty quickly. So initially, you saw JD Vance coming out and saying this is none of our business, then very soon after was working the phones with the Indian prime minister. I suspect what we saw was the Pakistanis beginning to either talk about moving their nuclear weapons around or actually moving nuclear weapons around in a way that convinced the United States that, if the escalation continued, we could end up in a place where things could get really ugly. I think we saw that we still have an interest in not seeing the nuclear taboo broken anywhere in the world. And I think even if your worldview is that we should be placing America first, that interest doesn't fundamentally change. Over the past few weeks, we've seen more non-nuclear countries talk about whether they should get their own weapons. Several countries in Europe are talking about it. There's a very active debate in South Korea. Do you think we could see more countries going nuclear in a world where US security guarantees seem a little less ironclad than they used to? The United States has played a vital, I would argue, load-bearing function in global non-proliferation, by virtue of extending its own nuclear defense to a long list of countries around the world. There's more than 50 countries to which the United States extends assurances that it will use all of its military capabilities, including nuclear weapons if necessary, to defend these allies. I should emphasize that these allies, at no moment, really have been perfectly assured. This is fundamentally a promise that the United States makes that's very difficult to render fully credible. We're essentially telling non-nuclear countries, including some that share borders with countries like China — like North Korea, like Russia — that we would be willing to run the risk of nuclear war on their behalf. And that sounds a little crazy, and from the perspective of our allies, that's part of the reason why they've been very skittish, historically, about the statements our national leaders make. So, as we sort of live through the first few months of the second Trump administration, for the first time since the end of the Cold War, the level of interest among many allies of the United States in acquiring nuclear weapons is higher than it has been in decades. Again, not everything about this new nuclear age is new. During the Cold War, we did have prominent concerns from allies about these very same issues. The West Germans wanted nuclear weapons. The South Koreans had a covert nuclear program that the United States put in the box in the late 1970s. So we've been here before. But, of course, today, the kinds of dynamics we're seeing now are fundamentally a lot more serious. Because I would argue that the United States is currently in the process of relitigating its entire grand strategy. It is rethinking the role that it sees for itself in the international system and its relationship to long-standing alliances. So this increases the pull of nuclear weapons [for some countries]. Now, does this mean that nuclear proliferation is preordained in the 21st century and the third nuclear age? I don't think so. I think for a variety of very good reasons, allies will be very careful about how they choose to proceed, even if they have a national conversation about whether nuclear weapons potentially answer some of the sources of insecurity they currently perceive. Even if they answer that question in the affirmative, there's a second question that they then have to ask, which is, well, how do we get them, and what would the costs be? That is where things start to get a lot more complicated. What do you think is going to be the lasting legacy of the war in Ukraine on the nuclear weapons front? On the one hand, we've seen the threat of nuclear weapons brandished by Vladimir Putin in a really alarming way. On the other hand, the fact that nuclear weapons haven't been used, shows that deterrence and the taboos against their use are still at least partly in effect, right? I mean, my book exists because of the Ukraine war. I think the Ukraine war has been the biggest wake-up call, [showing] that we have arrived in this new nuclear era where we, once again, need to think about the possibility of global nuclear conflict. It's not that we live in the world of the Cold War, where we are worried about massive nuclear exchanges or first-strike scenarios. I think the most likely scenario leading to nuclear use today would be a conventional war or a crisis that either directly implicates the nuclear-armed states or implicates their national interests in a way that's likely to draw them into a conflict. I think Ukraine is the first conflict, in many ways, of this new nuclear age, in that it has definitely tested many of our beliefs about nuclear deterrence and has really revealed the opportunities and limitations with deterrence. Deterrence has been beneficial for both NATO and Russia in seeking their political ends: Russia to carry out its conventional war, NATO to support Ukraine militarily. Both Russia and NATO have respected fundamental red lines as they perceive them on the other side, but at the same time, each party has been frustrated with its ability to fully implement its plans. If Russia were more successful with its nuclear threats, NATO wouldn't be in the position where it ended up supplying Ukraine and ensuring that Ukraine could put up an effective conventional military resistance. Similarly, NATO hasn't been able to implement a no-fly zone over Ukraine or put its own boots on the ground. So deterrence doesn't solve all your problems, but it certainly is an important factor in shaping the modern battlefield between nuclear-armed countries and their patrons. When it comes to the current administration, Donald Trump has made several comments about how seriously he takes the threat of nuclear war, and he's even proposed 'denuclearization' talks with China and Russia. But do you see any signs that this kind of talk is actually being turned into policy? I don't see a big policy push on arms control or even nuclear policy matters. The Trump administration, for the moment, doesn't appear to be deeply interested in questions of nuclear policy, and so things are really just on autopilot from where the Biden administration left off. That said, Donald Trump certainly has spoken about nuclear weapons quite a bit. He's cited them as an existential threat to humanity. He's pointed out on multiple occasions that he sees nuclear war as a greater threat to mankind than climate change. And he has said for decades that he does have an interest in something resembling arms control. In the 1980s, he even said that one of his greatest dreams of life was to negotiate an arms control agreement. So I do think as a second-term president, he does appear to be more concerned with matters pertaining to his personal legacy. I think that explains some of what we've seen with regard to talk of, for instance, territorial conquest of Canada, Greenland, and Panama, and so we might see a similar impulse as he tries to renormalize relations with Russia, to broach the topic of arms control. Now the risk here is, of course, that the Russians will be a lot better prepared. I think the Russians have a policy process at the moment that will lead to them having a much clearer sense of what they would want to ask of the United States in that arms control negotiation. Arms control has always been a means to advance national security. It hasn't been an end in itself. During the first Trump administration, Trump did authorize his envoys to try to seek arms control breakthroughs with both Russia and China. It just so happened that at the time, neither country really saw a national interest-based case for engaging with the United States in good faith on arms control. So it's possible that we get arms control. It just might not be the kind of arms control agreement that would advance US or allied national interests. Next year, we're going to see the expiration of New START, the last significant treaty putting limits on the size of the US and Russian nuclear arsenal. What happens after that? Could we see the kind of arms build-ups we saw during the Cold War again? The idea that we're going back to a world of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons is just not consistent with the current state of the nuclear enterprise. It would just be incredibly costly. But what I think the end of New START will mark is the formal arrival of a more dangerous, multipolar nuclear era to which the United States will look to respond, and there's a really active debate about how it will respond. One of the fundamental changes for the United States, in particular, but also for American allies and even non-ally countries like India, is the remarkable shift that we've seen in China's approach. We don't understand exactly why that change has happened, but the change is that China has moved from a nuclear force that for decades remained fairly low in terms of numbers to a nuclear force that the US intelligence community now estimates will potentially reach 1,500 warheads by the mid 2030s. That's still less than the current deployed nuclear force that the United States and Russia maintain under new START. But the question for the United States if you're looking at Russia as well as China, as well as a North Korea that probably is soon going to have as many warheads as China did at the start of the start of the 2020s, is whether the US might need more tools in its nuclear to \olkit. This, I think, is going to be the fundamental question for the Trump administration. There are realistic things the US could do, like it could put additional nuclear warheads on intercontinental missiles and submarine-launched missiles that, for arms control reasons, largely have deployed for a number of years with less than the total number of warheads they can accommodate. But if Russia and China determined that the US response to this new environment will require them to also make adjustments to their own nuclear postures, we end up in an arms race, and we end up in a world where we face greater nuclear dangers because all three of the major nuclear powers will see incentives to posture their nuclear and conventional forces in more dangerous ways. It certainly seems, as you note in the book, that despite the growing dangers, nuclear weapons are still not as prominent in our political debates or the culture (Oppenheimer notwithstanding) as they were in the Cold War. Certainly, younger generations don't have the same visceral experience with this as those who lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis or the 1980s arms build-ups did. Do we, as Americans, particularly younger Americans, need to be more worried about nukes? For me, I lived in India in 1998, the year India tested a nuclear weapon. The next year, in 1999, India and Pakistan fought a war in the nuclear shadow. And so, I'm a millennial, but that gives me a perspective that's not too common in the United States or in the West. I think millennials and Gen Z, these generations that have come of age in largely peaceful and prosperous Western countries in the aftermath of the Cold War, will need to wrap their heads around this really important source of catastrophic risk for humanity. There's a fine line between being alarmist and trying to inform the public, and I hope my book walks that tightrope appropriately. It's not that, you know, I think we all need to run around with our hair on fire about global thermonuclear war breaking out at any moment, but the message for future generations is that nuclear weapons very much deserve our attention, especially in democracies where citizens vote for their lawmakers and for their national leaders. In the United States, when it comes to matters of nuclear war, the president has absolute authority. There's not a second center of decision-making. The greatest way we could actually mitigate some of these risks is to have more conscientious national leaders.
