Tag: United States of America (USA)

The world’s most credible democracy watchdog reports the US is no longer a liberal democracy

Martin Gelin, writing in The Guardian:

The US is no longer a democracy. One of the most credible global sources on the health of democratic nations now says this outright. The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute at Gothenburg University reaches the alarming conclusion in its annual report, that the US is hurtling towards autocracy at a faster rate than Hungary and Turkey.

“Our data on the USA goes back to 1789. What we’re seeing now is the most severe magnitude of democratic backsliding ever in the country,” says Staffan Lindberg, founder of the institute.
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US government cyber security experts thought Microsoft’s Cloud was “a pile of shit,” They still approved it.

The tech giant’s “lack of proper detailed security documentation” left reviewers with a “lack of confidence in assessing the system’s overall security posture,” according to an internal government report reviewed by ProPublica.

Or, as one member of the team put it: “The package is a pile of shit.”

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Trump’s threats to NATO reveal glaring absence of any strategy on Iran

Dan Sabbagh, the Guardian’s defence and security editor, writes:

If there was a moment when the absence of a US strategy on Iran was exposed, then this was it. Donald Trump demanded on Saturday that the UK, China, France, Japan and others participate in a naval escort for oil tankers through the strait of Hormuz.

Despite launching the attack on Iran, with Israel, the White House does not seem to have fully anticipated what was likely to follow. Iran had few good military options for fighting back, but attacking US bases, US allies and merchant shipping in the Gulf was the most obvious response – to try to impose costs on the west.

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Trump, fixated on military power, had no particular desire to work with any country other than Israel – and none wanted to join in starting a war against Iran. As a result, naval preparation by US allies before the start of the war was nonexistent. None of Britain, France, China and Japan had warships ready to take up convoy duties.

For any escort operation to be viable, it might require eight to 10 destroyers, according to Richard Meade, the editor-in-chief of Lloyd’s List, though that would be enough to protect only “five to 10 vessels, making a transit every day and a half”. That would amount to about 10% of prewar shipping volumes.

US has released it’s new national cybersecurity strategy [updated]

On Friday, 2026.03.06, the White House released their new national cybersecurity strategy titled “President Trump’s Cyber Strategy for America”.

The 2026 Strategy spans just three pages in substance, compared to roughly 34 pages in the 2023 Strategy and 26 pages in the 2018 Strategy.

The prior cybersecurity strategy documents included extensive background discussion, detailed descriptions of the cyber threat environment, and numerous strategic objectives intended to guide implementation across the federal government.
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With his war of choice on Iran, Trump continues to do lasting damage to international trust in America

Edward Luce, the US national editor and a columnist at the Financial Times, writes:

Trump chose to go to war and has taken explicit satisfaction in his power of life and death. War is a grave step after all other options have been exhausted. That Trump had other courses of action is well understood. That he preferred this one is hard to unsee.

What the US attack on Iran could mean for national security

On 2026.03.05, Bruce Hoffman, senior fellow at US-based Council on Foreign Relations, wrote:

The Department of Homeland Security has reportedly warned of potential lone-wolf attacks and cyberattacks in the wake of the strikes, and state and local authorities have moved to heightened alert for any retaliation on American soil.

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Sleeper agents, lone actors inspired and motivated by Iran, cyberattacks on US infrastructure, and physical attacks on critical infrastructure are all possible.

The US and Israel launched joint airstrikes on Iran on February 28, 2026

On 2026.02.28, the US and Israel launched joint airstrikes on multiple sites and cities across Iran, assassinating Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other Iranian officials, striking a school with a Tomahawk missile, which killed some 165 people, including children, and starting yet another Gulf War.

Iran responded with missile and drone strikes against Israeli and US-allied countries and bases in the region, including Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Cyprus, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and the United Arab Emirates.

UN General Assembly resolution on Ukraine approved

The UN General Assembly, to mark the fourth year of Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine on Tuesday, February 24, 2026, adopted a resolution calling for “a just and lasting peace” in Ukraine. But to do so, they had to reject a last-minute proposal from the US to delete two crucial paragraphs from the draft text that included references to Ukraine’s “sovereignty” and “territorial integrity.”

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96% of the world’s nuclear weapons are held by states with authoritarian leaders

Russia and the United States are equally to blame for ending a process begun in the 1960s and marked by the first strategic arms limitation treaty (SALT) in 1972. The construction of over a dozen interlocking agreements over these decades worked to first limit the growth of nuclear stockpiles and then manage their reduction. We went from 70,000 nuclear bombs at the height of the Cold War to just over 12,000 today.

For authoritarian leaders like Putin and Trump, however, these treaties are a restraint on their power. Ending arms control is part of their assault on the global international order; part of the same impulse that caused Putin to invade Ukraine in violation of existing laws and Trump to rupture the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance in pursuit of territorial expansion. Although they may still agree to voluntary limitations on their weapons, these do not have the binding force of a treaty and can easily be violated. In their view, their power and wealth depend on military might, not pieces of paper.

Source:

Joseph Cirincione, Le Monde Editorial: ‘Today, 96% of the world’s nuclear weapons are held by states with authoritarian leaders’ https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2026/02/18/today-96-of-the-world-s-nuclear-weapons-are-held-by-states-with-authoritarian-leaders_6750613_23.html