The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) has published its weekly review of analysis, arguing that President Donald Trump's diplomatic engagements with China, Greenland and the United Nations deliver less than their ceremonies suggest.
Writing in USA Today, Craig Singleton said Trump's Sept. 24 White House welcome for Chinese leader Xi Jinping featured "a state dinner, smiles for the cameras and carefully scripted statements of goodwill," projecting stability while competition between the two countries "remains as fierce as ever." The piece is headlined "US got pandas from China. Trump needs a lot more than that."
In The Hill, Richard Goldberg and Ben Cohen warned that the race to choose the next UN secretary-general has yet to produce a clear frontrunner, but that the most recent straw poll of Security Council members showed Rebeca Grynspan, a former Costa Rican vice-president who has led the UN Conference on Trade and Development since 2021, with a razor-thin lead. Their article is titled "Don't let our next UN secretary-general be a shill for China, Cuba and Hamas."
Clifford D. May, writing in The Washington Times, revisited Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's president from 2008 to 2012, recalling that in 2012 President Obama told him on a hot mic that after his last election he would have "more flexibility" on missile defense in Europe.
In USA Today, Bradley Bowman and Cameron McMillan wrote that Trump described a Sept. 22 agreement signed by the United States, Denmark and Greenland as "a dream come true," saying it would guarantee America's "permanent control over security" of the Danish territory. The authors said the deal largely restates defense arrangements already in place.
FDD also published a monograph by Jiwon Ma arguing that NATO's ability to concentrate combat power depends on roads, railways, ports, airfields and the cybersecurity of civilian systems enabling military movement, calling it potentially "the difference between preventing Russia from rapidly seizing NATO territory and having to fight hard to retake lost territory."
Other FDD analysis this week covered Hezbollah's use of Syria as a financial base after the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime, and a network of fake watchdog and news websites that FDD said advances Qatari interests.