Month: March 2025

Following a first high-level meeting between American and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia on Feb. 18, and the phone call just one month later between Presidents Trump and Putin, technical delegations from the two countries met for several hours in Riyadh on March 24 behind closed doors. As expected, no official public statements were produced at the conclusion. Just as […]

n a number of recent interventions, Russian President Putin has put the BRICS grouping at the center of the discussion of the needed new security order. He did so, as we reported, on the very important occasion of his first response to President Trump’s ceasefire proposal for Ukraine, on March 13, in which he thanked not only the U.S. President, […]

If Donald Trump manages to carry through on his plan to normalize relations between the United States and Russia completely, one area that would benefit greatly from cooperation is space research and travel. Here, the openings are virtually unlimited, going from the short-term, such as defense of the entire planet against such natural threats as asteroids, to the long-term colonization […]

According to the March 8 Financial Times, five days after the national elections in Germany, election winner Friedrich Merz had lunch with acting Finance Minister Jörg Kukies. “At lunchtime last Friday [Feb. 28], Germany’s chancellor-to-be received a sobering briefing on the state of the economy from finance minister Jörg Kukies. Kukies explained that after two years of stagnation and with […]

The unprecedented militarization and infrastructure programs that were signed into law after passing the Bundestag and the Bundesrat last week (cf. SAS 12/25), provide for €400 billion in defense spending (to be financed by debt) and €500 bn in infrastructure projects, largely defense-related. To recruit the Greens into the alliance of the CDU-CSU and SPD, the CDU Chancellor candidate Friedrich […]

The March 20 Board meeting of the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) unanimously approved the extension of former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s term as head of the bank for five years more. First named to chair the bank by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2023, it was Russian President Vladimir Putin who proposed that her chairmanship be extended, […]

In resorting to desperate measures to remain in office, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is threatening to unleash civil war in Israel and a broader war in the region, including against Iran. As crowds surge into Israeli streets in protest, commentators quibble over which of his many outrageous acts they are demonstrating against the most vehemently: In the last week, […]

At a time when Israel has launched an offensive in Gaza that can only be compared to the “end of the Warsaw Ghetto,” an Egyptian Army spokesman held a briefing session with the state-run news agency MENA on the armed forces’ preparedness to deal with the current crisis and any “plots” against the Egyptian state. Brig. Gen. Gharib Abdel Hafez asserted […]

On the first day of his arrival at the White House, Donald Trump issued an executive order shutting down the operation of USAID, the main aid agency of the U.S. government, which has been involved in programs in nearly 100 countries around the world. While there is a danger that some of the beneficial measures it carried out (although with […]

The March 18 phone call between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump has opened the door to a perspective that has not existed for at least the last 35 years. According to the very preliminary readouts that were available before this issue of our newsletter went to bed, many topics were discussed between the two leaders, which, if realized, could […]