Latest news with #America-First
AU Financial Review
a day ago
- Politics
- AU Financial Review
‘Stronger together': Congress pushes AUKUS before Morrison hearing
Washington | United States lawmakers working to combat the threat of China gave strong support for the AUKUS submarine pact and urged Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth to consider how, in the face of rising aggression from Beijing, the agreement lifted security for all three partners. The Pentagon is considering the future of the defence deal between the US, Australia and the United Kingdom, to ensure it fits with President Donald Trump's America-First agenda, and does not diminish US naval capacity in the event of a war with China over Taiwan.
Business Times
14-07-2025
- Politics
- Business Times
Bye-bye America First?
US PRESIDENT Donald Trump's decision to join Israel in its war with Iran and to strike at the Iranian nuclear programme has shocked the neo-isolationist members of the Maga (Make America Great Again) movement. They have counted on him to remain committed to his America-First pledge of refraining from intervening in Middle Eastern wars. But then the same 'America Firsters' were applauding leaked news reports indicating that the Trump administration would be denying Ukraine much needed weapons, including Patriot air-defence and Hellfire missiles, the excuse being that US stockpiles of these arms were in short supply. The driver of the Ukraine arms denial was Elbridge Colby, the undersecretary of defence, one of the leading neo-isolationists in the administration. He has argued that the US Patriot stocks were too low and that American resources must be preserved for a possible war with China. The weapons denial came at a precarious moment for Ukraine, which has been pummelled by Russian cruise missiles, drones and decoys aimed at exhausting the country's defences. For months, Russia has courted Trump with promises of economic cooperation and pledges of its desire for peace in an effort to splinter Western support for Ukraine. Such efforts, paired with Trump's willingness to engage with Russia, appeared to initially pay dividends. The US held its first high-level talks with Russia in Saudi Arabia in February, and Moscow sent officials to Washington to discuss potential cooperation between the two countries. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up For a while, it seemed that Trump's America First non-interventionist strategy of attempting to disengage from the Russia-Ukraine war and distance itself from Kyiv was paying off. But the Russians didn't seem to budge when it came to the idea of peace talks with Ukraine. With no breakthroughs, Trump – who has kept beseeching Russia's President Vladimir Putin – may have finally come to the conclusion that the Russian leader keeps stringing him along. During their recent phone conversation, the US president attempted again to coax the Russian leader to agree to a ceasefire. But then he was 'very disappointed' with the conversation and admitted to reporters that he 'didn't make any progress' with Putin. 'I'm not happy about that,' Trump insisted. 'I don't think he's looking to stop the war, and that's too bad,' he added of Putin. The Russian leader hit Kyiv with one of the biggest drone and missile attacks of the war the same night of his conversation with the US president. The reality was that Putin thought that he was winning the war and would make more gains if Trump would stop deliveries of US weapons to Ukraine. Neo-isolationists have argued that if, indeed, the Russia-Ukraine war reaches a stalemate, Trump should merely wash his hands of Ukraine. In practical terms, that would have allowed Putin to crush the Ukrainians. Instead, Trump, critical of continued Russian airstrikes, reversed course, and announced that he planned to overrule the neo-isolationists at the Pentagon. He would send additional Patriot air defence systems to Ukraine. Trump, giving one of his clearest indications yet that his relationship with Putin was deteriorating, admitted during a Cabinet meeting that the Russian president was insincere with the US. Yes, Putin was 'nice' but a lot of what he said 'turned out to be meaningless'. The United States is 'going to send some more weapons' to Ukraine, Trump explained. 'We have to. They have to be able to defend themselves. They're getting hit very hard.' Behind him, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth nodded, despite the contradiction of the administration's announcement days earlier of military shipments being stopped. A Pentagon spokesperson later said that 'at President Trump's direction, the Department of Defense is sending additional defensive weapons to Ukraine to ensure the Ukrainians can defend themselves while we work to secure a lasting peace and ensure the killing stops'. The about-face came days after a call from Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky to Trump, in which the Ukrainian leader said the two men spoke of joint weapons production, and air defence. In a way, with Trump's comments on arming Ukraine, there is now a reversion to the policies of his predecessor, of opposing Russian aggression. President Zelensky urgently needs more Patriot interceptor missiles, which are the only way of taking down Russian ballistic missiles. Trump has spoken with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has offered to buy Patriots from the US to supply Ukraine. That led Zelensky to declare that his phone call with Trump was 'the best conversation we have had during this whole time, the most productive'. Moreover, Trump said that he was not 'very strongly' considering supporting a bipartisan Senate bill that would impose severe sanctions on countries that purchase Russia oil. These countries include China, India and Brazil. After six months in office, Trump finds himself back where Biden always was, after trying almost everything else as he sought to disengage the US from the Russia-Ukraine war. But this America First approach of playing nice with Putin has failed, doing nothing to change Putin's position. Trump learned slowly that the Kremlin does not want peace and has reversed course. The US president has demonstrated his sense of realism while disappointing once again his Maga enthusiasts with their non-interventionist dogma over Iran and Ukraine. To put it in simple terms, from Trump's perspective, America First means what he wants it to mean.
Business Times
01-07-2025
- Politics
- Business Times
Americans aren't isolationist; polls suggest most support the US in ‘taking the lead'
On the eve of the US attack on Iran's nuclear military sites, much of the discussion in Washington focused on the opposition to the move by members of the neo-isolationist wing of the Republican Party. These isolationists argued that a new US military intervention in the Middle East would prove to be costly in terms of US military and economic interests, leading to increasing petrol prices, rising inflation and perhaps even World War III. They also accused Israel of trying to draw the US into its war with Iran. Leading right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson and former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon warned US President Donald Trump that his political base is dominated by a majority of anti-interventionists who would oppose his attempt to embroil in the US in the Iran-Israel war, and that they would see it as a betrayal of the America-First agenda. Some pundits speculated that this supposed opposition from Trump's own supporters would pressure him to not attack Iran. It did not. In retrospect, it seems the warnings by Carlson and Bannon were based on an inaccurate reading of the political map, both in terms of views of the Make America Great Again (Maga) movement and the general US public. To put it in simple terms, most Americans – including staunch Trumpists – are not isolationists. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up The polls are clear on the subject. One such survey by the Ronald Reagan Institute, taken before Israel and the US launched military strikes against Iran, found that 90 per cent of self-identified Maga Republicans believed that 'preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons is important to US security'. The same poll also indicated that 86 per cent of Maga Republicans view the security of Israel as important to the US; 81 per cent wanted to maintain or increase US support for Israel's military campaigns against Hamas and Hezbollah; and 64 per cent backed Israel in carrying out airstrikes to destroy Iran's nuclear reactors. The poll suggests that not only do Maga Republicans reject isolationism, they are more hawkish and supportive of the US' role in the world, with 73 per cent believing that the US should be 'more engaged and take the lead' in the world. More specifically, a clear majority of Maga Republicans support responding with military force if a member of North Atlantic Treaty Organization were attacked. They would also back the US taking military action to defend Taiwan if it were attacked by China. The same kind of interventionist sentiments were also embraced by a majority of Americans. A Jun 2 survey by Beacon Research/Shaw & Company found that 'when it comes to international events', 64 per cent of Americans believe it is better for the US to 'be more engaged and take the lead', compared with 23 per cent who disagree. Among Democrats, support for being more engaged was 65 per cent, compared with half among Independents. The biggest supporters were Republicans at 69 per cent, and among them, Maga Republicans at 73 per cent. The bottom line is that while neo-isolationists like Tucker and Bannon know how to make a lot of noise on social media, their views represent that of a minority of Americans, including Maga voters. Isolationism may sound cool, but most Americans, including proponents of America First, still do not buy into it.
Business Insider
28-06-2025
- Politics
- Business Insider
Your member of Congress might be using ChatGPT
In December, Rep. Thomas Massie used an analogy for foreign aid that was an instant hit among his libertarian and America-First Republican fans. "US foreign aid spending is like watering the neighbor's yard while your house is on fire," the Kentucky Republican posted on X, adding a fire emoji. Fox News wrote an article about it, and two months later, the libertarian student group "Young Americans for Liberty" turned it into an Instagram post. As it turns out, Massie didn't come up with the line himself. Grok did. Massie told BI this month that he ripped the phrase from a speech he asked the xAI-developed chatbot to generate using his voice. He said he's done this more than once. "Out of five paragraphs, I'll find one sentence that's good," Massie said. "But it makes it worth doing." Leaning on AI for speechwriting is an apparently bipartisan affair on Capitol Hill. "I'll type in some phrases and say, can we make this more punchy?" Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California told BI, adding that he began using ChatGPT "almost like an editor" in the last year. "There was some speech I gave where it edited in a couple of lines that people thought, 'Wow, that's really good,'" Khanna said. Congress has developed a reputation for lagging behind the public when it comes to adopting new technology. Plenty of lawmakers told BI that they have yet to get into using AI, either because they're skeptical that it will be useful for them or they just haven't gotten around to it. But several lawmakers have begun to casually adopt the technology, most often as a search engine and research tool. Khanna said he uses both ChatGPT and Grok, turning to the technology "two to three times per day." Massie, who uses Grok because of its convenient placement within the X app, said he uses the chatbot for "anything." 'Impressively good at certain things and pretty miserable at some things' As Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has waged a fight to make deeper cuts to federal spending as part of the "Big Beautiful Bill," he's been consulting with Grok. "I got up at 3 o'clock in the morning with an idea to use it," the Wisconsin Republican told BI in early June. He said the technology's been useful for running the numbers on the bill's impact on the deficit and to find documents that support his arguments. "It's really great at identifying sources without me having to crawl around in government forms." In some ways, members of Congress are just doing what other Americans are doing. More and more people are using AI at work, according to a recent Gallup poll, with 40% of employees saying they use it a few times per year. Another 19% say they use it frequently, while 8% say they use it on a daily basis. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a champion of a controversial provision in the "Big Beautiful Bill" that would restrict state's ability to regulate AI for 10 years, told BI that while he "would not claim to be a sophisticated AI user," he's been using ChatGPT as an "enhanced search engine." Cruz said he recently asked an AI chatbot about his own record, when he "could not remember when I had first taken a public position" on a particular policy area. "It gave a very thorough answer, going back to an interview I'd done in 2012 and a comment I'd made in 2014," Cruz said. "That research previously would have required some staff assistance, spending hours and hours, and you still wouldn't have found anything." Large language models like ChatGPT and Grok are known to sometimes present false information as fact — known as "hallucinating." For Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, that's enough to discourage her from using it. "It lies," Warren told BI. "I've tried using it, and it gets things wrong that I already know the answer to. So when I see that, I've lost all confidence." Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said he's tried ChatGPT and has been disappointed by its apparent limitations, even when carrying out more basic tasks. In one instance, Murphy said he asked ChatGPT to generate a list of his Democratic colleagues ordered alphabetically by first name, only for it to include retired senators. "It seems to be impressively good at certain things and pretty miserable at some things," Murphy said. Even those who are otherwise fans of the technology said they're aware that they could be getting fed incorrect information. "My chief of staff has astutely warned me that AI is often confidently wrong," Johnson said. "So you really have to be careful in how you phrase your questions." "It definitely hallucinates on you," Massie said. "It told me there was a Total Wine and More in Ashland, Kentucky, and no such thing exists."
Business Times
23-06-2025
- Politics
- Business Times
A war president: Ensuring that the war with Iran doesn't turn into Iraq War II
HE RAN for office bashing members of the Republican Party's neoconservative wing for drawing the US into costly military quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, and vowing not to involve America in 'endless wars' in the Middle East and elsewhere. As President Donald Trump insisted before and after taking office, his America-First foreign policy agenda would preclude embroiling the American people in military crusades aimed at 'regime change' and 'democracy promotion', and would focus instead on pursuing a prudent non-interventionist policy that reflects core US national interests. Those pledges not only helped Trump get elected, but also energised his political base and members of his Maga (Make America Great Again) movement, who were assured that under a president committed to the America-First doctrine there would not be reruns of the Iraq War. No more US military interventions that would turn into slippery slopes to quagmires and disasters whether in Ukraine or, for that matter, in Iran. It is no surprise, therefore, that Trump's attack on three of Iran's nuclear sites and bringing the US military into Israel's war with the Islamic Republic on Sunday (Jun 22) have created a sense of deja vu among the anti-interventionists on the political right as well as the political left. Call it the Iraq Syndrome. But sceptics of US military interventions recall the time in 2003, on the eve of then president George W Bush's decision to attack Iraq, when policymakers and pundits in Washington warned that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) that he could use against America and its allies. He did not have those weapons, as many of the anti-war critics had argued in 2003. Now, Trump is insisting that Iran was on its way to develop a nuclear weapon, and that America needed to prevent the Iranians from enriching uranium that would have allowed them to acquire the capability to acquire a nuclear bomb. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up But then Trump's own intelligence agencies had concluded that was not the case, as Tulsi Gabbard, US director of national intelligence, left no doubt when she testified to Congress about Iran's nuclear programme earlier this year. Iran was not building a nuclear weapon, Gabbard told lawmakers, and its supreme leader had not re-authorised the dormant programme even though it had enriched uranium to higher levels, she said. Instead, when deciding to attack Iran, Trump relied on the intelligence assessment of Israel and the conclusion drawn by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that the Islamic Republic was only a few months from acquiring nuclear capability. Did Gabbard or did Netanyahu make the right call here? Lawmakers on Capitol Hill would probably try to answer that question. The military interventionists in 2003, it should be recalled, had promised that a war against Iraq would be short and successful, and that the Iraqi people would receive the American invaders as 'liberators'. Today, there is a sense of victory. 'We have completed our very successful attacks on the three nuclear sites in Iran,' Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday. He added that a 'full payload' of bombs had been dropped on Fordo, the heavily fortified underground facility where Iran has produced near bomb-grade uranium. 'All planes are safely on their way home,' Trump wrote. Trump assumes that using air power would force Iran to capitulate and give up its nuclear strategy, and that the US would not have to deploy American troops to fight in Iran to press its government to surrender, like it did in Iraq. But air power alone rarely wins wars and if, as expected, Iran responds to the American attacks by targeting US soldiers and civilians, the Trump administration may have no choice but to raise the ante and deploy American troops against Iranian military and political centres of powers. That could mean that, like in 2003, the war in Iran could prove to be longer and costlier than Trump expects. Most opinion polls in 2003 had indicated that the public initially supported the invasion of Iraq, and Bush's declaration of 'Mission Accomplished' was received with applause around the country. But after a year or so when it was becoming clear that the war in Iraq would be long and costly, when American soldiers began to return to the US in body bags, the public support for the war fell and today, most Americans think that it was a costly strategic mistake. And like in 2003 when there was early support, it seems that the public is rallying behind Trump now. A poll by GrayHouse taken before the attack on Sunday found that 83 per cent of Trump voters support Israel's strike, and 73 per cent say that Iran cannot be trusted to honour an agreement. But the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has warned of 'irreparable damage' if the US joins the war. There are fears that Iran could turn on the Arab states that host American military bases where 40,000 US troops are stationed, and possibly even disrupt the global economy by seeking to close the crucial oil route through the Strait of Hormuz. Which raises the question: How would Trump's supporters respond if the Iranians retaliate against the American strike by attacking US military bases in the Persian Gulf and possibly killing American soldiers, demonstrating all the signs of a slippery slope towards a costlier US military intervention? How would the general American public respond as the economy stagnates, inflation raises its ugly head and petrol prices rise? Would the American people continue to support a US military intervention under these conditions? Indeed, there are some similarities between the march to war with Iraq in Washington in March 2003 and the atmosphere today when pro-war Republican lawmakers, such as Senator Lindsey Graham from South Carolina, and pundits on the Fox News channel are trying to rally the public behind the decision to join Israel in its attack against Iran. Some also predict that the Iranian people would eventually rise up against the ruling ayatollahs. But anti-interventionists or neo-isolationists like journalist Tucker Carlson and podcast host Stephen Bannon are warning that a war with Iran would have all the makings of another Iraq War. 'The first week of a war with Iran could easily kill thousands of Americans,' wrote Carlson last week. 'It could also collapse our economy', he added, as surging oil prices raise petrol prices to the stratosphere and trigger unmanageable inflation, as well as lead to a world war with China and Russia. Bannon said that US involvement in another war in the Middle East would 'tear the country apart', warning that 'we can't have another Iraq'. Similar warnings of 'endless war' are also emanating from members of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, who are exerting pressure on the party's lawmakers not to give Trump the green light to attack Iran. But there are differences between 2003 and 2025. Unlike in the Iraq War, Trump has not called for putting American troops on the ground and occupying Iran. Nor has there been any serious discussion of the US promoting a regime change in Teheran. Administration officials insist that the strike against Iran was a one-off operation and will not lead to a long-drawn war. And while it is true that Trump has pledged not to embroil the US in a war in the Middle East, he has also embraced another proposition and reiterated it again and again before and since entering office – that Iran should not be able to acquire nuclear military capability. One could indeed argue that depriving the Islamic Republic – a source of instability in the Middle East and a threat to US allies in the region, and one that is waging an endless war against the west since 1979 – from the capacity to develop a nuclear bomb is in line with core US national interests. The fact is that the Trump administration was engaged in diplomatic talks with Iranian officials, aimed at pressing Teheran to make a commitment to stop enriching uranium, which would amount to terminating its nuclear military programme. Trump could therefore contend that he had given Iran a chance for peace and Teheran rejected it. His goal now is to reach an agreement with Iran and create the conditions for peace in the Middle East. Is that a realistic proposition? Much would depend on what happens in the coming days and weeks in the Middle East. It seems that the Iranians are not ready to surrender and are likely to take military action against American targets, which could lead to US retaliation. If that happens and is followed by military escalation, Trump may discover – like Bush did in 2003 – that it is easier to get into a war than to get out of it. The president who had promised no more 'endless wars' may end up on a slippery slope being drawn into one.
