Europe confronts insecurities as Israel eliminates its own, Congress prods Taiwan

(Originally published Feb. 13 in “What in the World“) Europe continues to focus on the threat from Russia in the East. But what about the threat within?

Germany military intelligence projects that Russia could in three years have accumulated enough weaponry and troops to launch a wider war against Europe. Luckily, the U.S. still has 85,000 troops stationed on the Continent to protect Europe.

Luckily? Trump has apparently decided not to act on veiled threats to pull U.S. troops and weapons out of Europe. Europeans think the volte-face is a recognition by Trump of Europe’s strategic importance to the U.S., not to mention that the troop presence is a legally binding requirement of Congressional defense funding.

The other reason, though, might be one the Europeans will like less: U.S. troops are an occupational force, there to ensure regime change when the opportunity comes. While the Pentagon’s latest National Defense Strategy puts the onus of Europe’s defense on the Europeans, Trump’s National Security Strategy aligns the U.S. with right-wing European political aims. Europeans also won’t soon forget Trump’s threat to seize Greenland from ally Denmark by force. To Trump, nothing in Europe, or its historical alliances with the U.S., is sacred. European trust, therefore, is at low-ebb.

Trump is meanwhile considering dispatching a second aircraft carrier to the Middle East to attack Iran. Trump’s shortage of carriers to intimidate his growing list of global foes—from Venezuela and Cuba to Iran, Nigeria, and Somalia—has underscored the limitations of the world’s most powerful military to give bite to Trump’s bark.

But Trump is right about America’s need for greater self-sufficiency in manufacturing—particularly in defense. The concern is that the U.S. doesn’t have the manufacturing muscle needed to win the next Pacific War, with China stepping in for Japan.

On that front, U.S. lawmakers are pestering Taiwan to buy more American weaponry. While Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te last year proposed boosting U.S. weapons purchases by $40 billion, the opposition-controlled parliament has countered with a proposal to spend buy much less. So, 37 U.S. Congresspeople, both Democrats and Republicans, sent Taiwan’s parliament a letter warning them that delays in the purchases could leave Taiwan under-prepared to face the growing peril from China.

If Democrats and Republicans can agree on nothing else, it’s that China poses an immediate threat to U.S. security and must be contained. This assumption about China-U.S. relations—the obverse of which now prevails in Beijing—is “locking both societies and the international system into a condition of managed hostility, diminished prosperity, and chronic insecurity,” warn Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Peking University professors emeriti, David Lampton and Wang Jisi, in a new article for Foreign Affairs.

While Congress tries to stoke conflict with China, Israel is turning the ceasefire in Gaza into another phase of war. Israel conducted more airstrikes in Gaza last month than in any month since the supposed ceasefire between it and Hamas was clinched last October. Israel says the attacks are in response to ceasefire violations by Hamas, which it accuses of using the ceasefire to rearm. Israel’s concept of ceasefire seems somewhat fluid, though. Since signing a ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon in November 2024, it has launched more than 1,000 attacks against Hezbollah targets there.