Russia plays down Trump's order to move 2 nuclear subs, urges caution on nuclear rhetoric
Russia said on Monday that everyone should be "very, very careful" about nuclear rhetoric, responding to a statement by U.S. President Donald Trump that he had ordered a repositioning of U.S. nuclear submarines.
In its first public reaction to Trump's comments, the Kremlin played down their significance and said it was not looking to get into a public argument with him.
Trump said on Friday he had ordered two nuclear submarines to be moved to "the appropriate regions" in response to remarks from former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev about the risk of war between the nuclear-armed adversaries.
"In this case, it is obvious that American submarines are already on combat duty. This is an ongoing process, that's the first thing," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
"But in general, of course, we would not want to get involved in such a controversy and would not want to comment on it in any way," he said. "Of course, we believe that everyone should be very, very careful with nuclear rhetoric."
The episode comes at a delicate moment, with Trump threatening to impose new sanctions on Russia and buyers of its oil, including India and China, unless President Vladimir Putin agrees by Friday to end the 3½-year war in Ukraine.
WATCH | Trump says he has ordered two nuclear submarines to move closer to Russia:
Trump deploys nuclear submarines after Russian ex-president's online comments
2 days ago
U.S. President Donald Trump says he has ordered two nuclear submarines to move closer to Russia in response to social media comments by former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev about the risk of war between the nuclear-armed adversaries.
Putin said last week that peace talks had made some positive progress but that Russia had the momentum in the war, signaling no shift in his position despite the looming deadline.
Trump has said he may send his envoy Steve Witkoff to Russia on Wednesday or Thursday. Witkoff has held long conversations with Putin on several previous visits but failed to persuade him to agree to a ceasefire.
The Kremlin declined to say if his latest proposed trip was taking place at Moscow's request and did not say what it hoped might emerge from it.
"We are always happy to see Mr. Witkoff in Moscow and we are always happy to have contacts with Mr. Witkoff. We consider them important, meaningful and very useful," Peskov said.
Online spat
Trump, who frequently promised to end the war within 24 hours while campaigning for the U.S. presidency last year, has spoken admiringly of Putin in the past but voiced increasing frustration with him of late.
Russia has stepped up the ferocity of its bombing attacks on Ukrainian cities, while three brief sessions of direct peace talks in Turkey have yielded no progress beyond exchanges of prisoners and war dead.
Some security analysts in both Russia and the West have criticized Trump for escalating an online spat with former president Medvedev — an arch-hawk whose statements are frequently designed to shock and provoke — to the point of publicly discussing U.S. nuclear deployments.
WATCH | Trump says Russia needs to reach ceasefire with Ukraine or face 'very severe tariffs':
Trump gives Putin 50-day deadline for Ukraine ceasefire
20 days ago
Peskov, however, said Russia did not see Trump's statement as marking an escalation in nuclear tension.
"We do not believe that we are talking about any escalation now. It is clear that very complex, very sensitive issues are being discussed, which, of course, are perceived very emotionally by many people," he said.
Peskov declined to answer directly when asked whether the Kremlin had tried to warn Medvedev to tone down his online statements.
"The main thing, of course, is the position of President Putin," he said.
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Winnipeg Free Press
2 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Alaska Sen. Murkowski toys with bid for governor, defends vote supporting Trump's tax breaks package
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, speaking with Alaska reporters Monday, toyed with the idea of running for governor and defended her recent high-profile decision to vote in support of President Donald Trump's tax breaks and spending cuts bill. Murkowski, speaking from Anchorage, said 'sure' when asked if she has considered or is considering a run for governor. She later said her response was 'a little bit flippant' because she gets asked that question so often. 'Would I love to come home? I have to tell you, of course I would love to come home,' she said. 'I am not making any decisions about anything, because my responsibility to Alaskans is my job in the Senate right now.' Several Republicans already have announced plans to run in next year's governor's race, including Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom. Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy is not eligible to seek a third consecutive term. Alaska has an open primary system and ranked choice voting in general elections. Murkowski is not up for reelection until 2028. A centrist, Murkowski has become a closely watched figure in a sharply divided Congress. She has at times been at odds with her party in her criticism of Trump and blasted by some GOP voters as a 'Republican in name only.' But her decision to support Trump's signature bill last month also frustrated others in a state where independents comprise the largest number of registered voters. She previously described her decision-making process around the bill as 'agonizing.' On Monday, she said it was clear to her the bill was not only a priority of Trump's but also that it was going to pass, so it became important to her to help make it as advantageous to the state as she could. 'So I did everything within my power — as one lawmaker from Alaska — to try to make sure that the most vulnerable in our state would not be negatively impacted,' she said. 'And I had a hard choice to make, and I think I made the right choice for Alaskans.'
Globe and Mail
2 hours ago
- Globe and Mail
The real reason behind the stunning U.S. job revisions and why Trump's firing of the BLS commissioner is utter nonsense
'For the FOURTH month in a row, jobs numbers have beat market expectations with nearly 150,000 good jobs created in June. American-born workers have accounted for ALL of the job gains since President Trump took office and wages continue to rise.' - White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, July 3rd, 2025 'In my opinion, today's Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.' - President Donald Trump, August 1st, 2025 What a difference a month makes. Strong leaders share the credit and accept the blame. Weak leaders take all the credit and lay the blame on others. Talk about a classic case of shooting the messenger. If you don't trust the payroll data, then just go to the companion survey, which showed a huge 260,000 jobs decline in July and down 402,000 since the end of the first quarter (in the aftermath of all the tariff-related uncertainty if you are seeking out a culprit). And with no revisions to blame, either. What a sham. We are on a slippery slope, folks. President Trump said BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer would be 'replaced with someone much more competent and qualified,' claiming in a social- media post the government's jobs numbers were manipulated. What utter nonsense, but nary a peep from Congress who worry about being primaried. Never mind that Ms. McEntarfer wasn't merely nominated to the post by then President Joe Biden, but she was confirmed by the Senate 86-8 in January 2024 – and Vice President JD Vance, then a senator, was among those voting for her! Did she all of a sudden become incompetent? Hard to fathom. I hardly would fire a BLS commissioner because of the headline or revisions to the data, which are normal – in fact, the sort of downward revisions we saw in the last two months, while very large, is hardly without precedent. We have seen revisions close to this no fewer than two dozen times back to 1980. Nobody else ever got fired over it. This was a large two-month downward revision, to be sure, but that is only because the numbers in May and June were grossly overstated and every other employment statistic showed that it was nonfarm payrolls was the odd man out. And the revisions only corrected that anomaly. The plain fact of the matter is that there is nothing insidious nor nefarious going on. No attempt to mislead and no sloppy usage of the data. No case for Erika McEntarfer, who has been a government statistician since 2002 which covers a span where Bush, Obama, Biden, and Trump were in the Oval Office, to be fired. This is one part ruse and one part deflection. That's all it is. The fact that this last two-month revision (-258,000) was so big only attests to how the Establishment survey was so out of sync with the other data which is why the consensus on the first release has been consistently below what came out initially. So, I ask: what is so difficult to figure out here beyond the sampling problem which the BLS did not create? The issue is with the post-Covid plunge in the business 'response rate'. This is not about the BLS which is forced to deal with the data that companies send in with respect to the initial release. It seems completely lost in this discussion that the root of the problem is the historically low company response rate to the first round of the monthly survey – this is a survey that depends on business cooperation and the reality is that the response rate does not approach anything that can be considered reliable until that second revision comes in. Maybe the BLS should simply stop publishing the payroll data so quickly – think of the first release as something no more than an incomplete snapshot of the labor market because it is no easy task 'to get it right' in the days that follow a month in a market as complex and large as a 130 million workforce, and all the churning that goes on beneath the surface. What we gain in speed of delivery of the data we lose in the veracity given the naturally lower sample size once the response rate rises in the next two months. The one thing to consider is that it is an entire employment report, replete with a wealth of information beneath the headline, even if incomplete at first. But there is typically a high error term in the first go-around and especially since the pandemic as a record low share of businesses 57% get in their responses now in time for the first payroll release. Pre-covid it was over 80% in terms of the response rate. By the time the third revision comes in, and the response rate goes to 94%, where it's always been in the past and it is only then that the BLS truly has enough information collected for anyone to get an accurate portrayal of what the labor market really looked like in the month of the first release. It's really something that only now are people paying attention to the fact that first estimates get revised as more accurate information is received. This has been a fact of life… forever. Nobody was talking about it a month ago, funny enough. And there will be future benchmark revisions in the future as even more information comes in. Everyone who follows the data closely knows that there is a high error term in the initial release of everything from payrolls to retail sales to GDP. It is all written up each month in the detailed notes to the data releases. The price paid to receive information quickly is the accuracy, as it pertains to the initial report. Nobody is amazed that we got July data on the first day of August? And this number will get revised too, for sure. These are preliminary estimates only with a large error term only because the sample size with the first stab at the employment report is so small. Why is everyone so shocked? It's not as if the BLS hides from the fact that the smaller the sample size, the larger the error term … this is taken right from the report (the range of possibilities is huge but is stated for the record): 'The confidence interval for the monthly change in total nonfarm employment from the establishment survey is on the order of plus or minus 136,000 … The precision of estimates also is improved when the data are cumulated over time … in the establishment survey, estimates for the most recent 2 months are based on incomplete returns; for this reason, these estimates are labeled preliminary in the tables. It is only after two successive revisions to a monthly estimate, when nearly all sample reports have been received, that the estimate is considered final.' Maybe the way the BLS reports the data should be changed, but it is at behest of the companies reporting in their payroll on time and accurately. Maybe those in the trading pits should be forced to wait two to three months for the better estimate instead of being spoon fed something quick with a low sample size. You just need to compare the business response rate of the first NFP estimate to the month containing the second revision – as aforementioned, from around 58% to 94% -- to see how the BLS is forced to make guesswork out of the 42% of the business universe that fail to report their headcount on time. The information trickles in the next two months. Maybe there should be a financial penalty applied to the firms who don't send in their information on time. I've been talking about this discrepancy for the past few years … and, in fact, the revisions have constantly been on the downside. The next question is why have the revisions been squarely to the downside, even before last Friday's report? Prior to what we saw unfold on Friday, there were downward revisions to every month of the year, and they totalled 188,000. That was before the downward two-month revision of 258,000 in May and June. Ergo, this has been a pattern all year long and transcends what happened in the July report. There is also the question as to why the data are constantly being revised lower. This is akin to asking why the prior payroll data were so artificially inflated. Once again, at the time of that initial release, the BLS is compelled to deal with whack load of guesswork. It must fill in the gaps from the fact that, once again, the initial response rate is historically so low. There is a huge information gap. The lower the sample size, the wider the confidence interval and the higher the error term – a basic premise of statistical analysis. The issue is that since Covid, the small business sector, in particular, has been slow to send in their updated staffing level numbers to the BLS in time for that first survey. And we know for a fact that the small business sector (fewer than 50 employees) has created no jobs at all over the past six months and have on net fired -42k workers over the May-July period. The BLS very likely was extrapolating small business job creation that simply did not exist over the spring and into the summer and that anomaly was corrected last Friday. End of story. Nobody from the White House discusses this, but what happened on Friday with the revisions is that nonfarm payrolls, which had been the odd man out, was brought into alignment with the vast array of other very soft labor market indicators of late. For example, the average private sector nonfarm payroll print of 51,000 from May to July now more closely approximates (actually a little higher) the ADP comparable of 37,000. Mr. President – it's not as if the BLS is any further away from telling the same story as ADP is. Do you want to know the name of the person who is president and CEO of ADP so you can dismiss here too (if you can)? Her name is Maria Black. Maybe she needs to be subpoenaed. Over this same May-July period, the Fed's Beige Book showed half the country posting flat to negative job growth. All the payroll numbers did on Friday was reflect that. The University of Michigan consumer sentiment data on employment in July lined up as the fourth worst reading since the end of the Great Financial Crisis in mid-2009. The Conference Board's consumer confidence survey showed only 30% of those polled stating that jobs were 'plentiful', the lowest since April 2021 – surely households would have a pretty good idea of what their job situation is, don't you think? But just in case you want to have the President and CEO of the Conference Board fired too, his name is Steve Odland, and I'm sure he is not too hard to find. There are plenty of culprits around these days spreading bad labour market news. David Rosenberg is founder of Rosenberg Research.
Japan Forward
2 hours ago
- Japan Forward
Two Atomic Bombs by America Ended the Asia-Pacific War ー Was There a Third Option?
Every August 6, on the anniversary of the atomic bomb attack against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an argument is remade. It reasons that Harry Truman, president of the United States of America, had two choices to end the Asia-Pacific War. He could force a surrender through the use of nuclear weapons or proceed with an invasion of the Japanese home islands. According to the contention, the option of the atomic bomb attack was the better of the two. It was touted as quicker, with an ultimately lower death toll. This assertion is nonsense, and always has been. There were never two options ー there were three. The third was to do what 99.9% of generals, commanders and statesmen have done throughout the history of warfare: Drop the insistence of unconditional surrender and negotiate. In this year of 2025, the two-option argument is even more nonsensical than usual. There are ongoing wars for which the option of negotiation will inevitably prevail. They include the Israel-Iran War and the war between Russia and Ukraine. Satellite image showing the entrance to a tunnel destroyed in a US airstrike, at a nuclear facility in Isfahan, central Iran, on June 22. (provided by Maxar Technologies, Reuters via Kyodo) Inappropriate Comparisons Curiously, when it comes to Israel-Iran, US President Donald Trump has been doing his best to draw parallels with the Asia-Pacific War and its dual option narrative. On June 17 he announced that he sought the "unconditional surrender" of Iran. In the wake of the US bombing of the Iranian Fordo nuclear facility, he evoked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Both the 1945 atomic bombs and his strike on Iran "ended the war," he proclaimed. It is possible that President Trump is trying to pull the rug out from underneath Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu by insisting that the problem of the Iranian nuclear program has been resolved and further military action is not required. A more likely scenario, however, is that he is attempting to magnify the scope of his achievement. In any event, the Hiroshima/Nagasaki parallel is ridiculous. Iran has not been militarily defeated (let alone forced to surrender unconditionally). Moreover, the failure of the US strike against the Iranian nuclear program makes negotiations even more certain. Inevitability of Negotiations Between Russia and Ukraine When it comes to the Russia-Ukraine War, differences between it and the Asia-Pacific War are undeniably stark. There will be no unconditional surrender from either of the combatants. That war has reached a stalemate and will end with a ceasefire, followed by a negotiated agreement. President Trump has famously attempted to effectuate such a deal. Some reports say he suggests allowing the Russians to keep most of what they occupy. Meanwhile, Ukraine gains a measure of security assuredness through the increased presence of American business interests. In particular, that would come within the mining sector. President Trump has portrayed Russian President Vladimir Putin as both reasonable and conciliatory. The initial aim of Putin was to wipe Ukraine off the map but he presently seems content to settle for the eastern regions that he presently holds. It is quite a compromise on the part of Putin, Trump has suggested. Trump has also focused on the loss of life extracted by the war, implying that loss of territory is preferable to continued Ukrainian casualties. The Japan of 1945 was asking for considerably less than President Trump is prepared to concede to the Russians. And far more lives were in the balance. On the eve of the Hiroshima attack, the Japanese were merely seeking to preserve the integrity of the imperial system via assurances that the Emperor would not be put on trial. The Allies were also fully aware of this reality as they had broken the Japanese codes. Yet, the demand for unconditional surrender was maintained. Atomic bombing of Hiroshima (©US Army via Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, HO) The Belligerent Mindset of Unconditional Surrender Unconditional surrender is a rarely exercised option, not a default setting. Having demanded unconditional surrender, a belligerent power does not acquire justification in resorting to war crimes when the price of total victory becomes too steep. Moreover, perceived or real, the war crimes of one's adversary do not legitimize one's own. Many nonetheless claim that the Japanese militarist regime was so abhorrent that the ends justify the means. Even when those means constitute an unconditional surrender obtained via nuclear attack. This is an argument that could perhaps be made by an Asian whose country had been subjected to colonization. When forwarded by a member of the West, as it generally is, a measure of ignorance or hypocrisy is more than often present. There are two ways of interpreting the Asia-Pacific War. The first is as a war between Asia in tandem with the West, against the Japanese aggressor. The second is as an imperial war for control over imperial possessions, conducted by combatants universally devoid of clean hands. Unsurprisingly, the West prefers the first of these scenarios. The second scenario is accurate. In earlier articles for JAPAN Forward, I have suggested that those prepared to justify the nuclear attacks on the basis of their success in comprehensively destroying the culture of Japanese imperialism should also recognize the impact of Japan in bringing down the ethos that buttressed the Western imperial presence in Asia. The Western empires, the British Empire in particular, were sustained by the myth of white supremacy. The ritualized humiliation that the Japanese wrought upon the white imperialists captured in Asia destroyed this myth, and brought forward the timetable for Asian self-determination by a generation at least. A Clean Break with the Past A case could further be made that it was precipitous for Japan to lose its empire at a stroke. Under that perception, it was bad both for the colonized people of Asia and for Japan itself. Asia was not freed by the fall of Japan. Subhas Chandra Bosesits in the distinguished visitor's box of the Japanese parliament listening to Japanese Prime Minister Tojo declare support for Indian Independence, 16th June 1943. (©Netaji Museum and Centre for Studies in Himalayan Languages Society & Culture, Giddha Pahar, Darjeeling district, West Bengal) Following surrender, the Western colonial powers attempted reassert control, often with the assistance of Japanese troops kept at arms. These efforts, however, were ultimately for nought. The carefully crafted myth of white superiority that had allowed so few to control so many was a casualty of the war. Colonial presence within high density Asia could not be reclaimed. The slow and painful colony disbursement that the Western powers endured over the next 30 years was an ordeal that the Japanese might be glad to have avoided. Complimentary Aims Arguments against the demand for unconditional surrender are just as strong. The most compelling can be found in the manner in which the US and Japan coordinated their aims after the Japanese surrender. One of the principal concerns of the Japanese throughout the 1920s and 30s was the direction in which China would ultimately go. Nineteenth-century exploitation by the imperial West had left the Chinese government impotent, leading to its fall in 1912. From 1912 until 1949, China was fractured. Two regimes emerged as potential unifying forces: the right wing Kuomintang (KMT) of Chiang Kai-shek, and the Communist Party under Mao Zedong. A scene from a painting of Chiang Kai-Shek in the Kinmen museum (©Robert D Eldridge) The Japanese were no less adamant than the United States of America that the Communists should not prevail. As with America, they sought to be the voice that a governing rightwing Chinese administration could not ignore. In short, America and Japan had the same fundamental aim when it came to China. They both sought to be the dominant influence over a ruling rightwing regime. Unsurprisingly, after Japan's surrender, the Japanese forces based within China eagerly cooperated with America by acting in the interests of the KMT. In occupied Japan itself, after a brief period, the US concluded that its fundamental aims and those of Japan within Asia were largely complementary. Many lives would have been saved if this reality had been acted upon prior to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Showa Emperor and General Douglas MacArthur. Japan's postwar constitution was drafted on General MacArthur's orders. Three Options, Not Two Arguments for and against the morality and merit of the atomic attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki exist in abundance and will continue to be advanced for generations to come. However, the US had more than a duality of options. It could have ended the war through negotiation - the manner in which the vast majority of wars are concluded. This is the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima attack. With negotiations inevitable in the Russia-Ukraine War, one hopes that the nonsense of the two-option argument has finally become clear. Moving forward, that debate should be directed towards the legitimate arguments that exist — both for and against those attacks. RELATED: Author: Paul de Vries Find other reviews and articles by the author on Asia Pacific history on JAPAN Forward.
