Threat Status for Monday, February 17, 2025. Share this daily newsletter with your friends, who can sign up here. Send tips to National Security Correspondent Ben Wolfgang.
Threat Status is on the ground in Abu Dhabi at IDEX 2025, the largest open-air arms bazaar in the world.
… European leaders met today for what they called an “emergency meeting” after being frozen out of the Trump administration’s direct talks with Moscow, the first step in what the White House hopes will be a deal to end the Russia-Ukraine war. The biggest development out of Europe is this: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he’s ready to send peacekeeping troops to Ukraine.
… This is significant for several reasons. It could signal that Europe, with Britain leading the charge, is prepared to step up with actual military force and put its troops on the ground to help guarantee security for Ukraine. The Trump administration would likely see that as a win after its harsh words for Europe last week.
… But it’s worth remembering that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week made two relevant and controversial points: The U.S. won’t send its own peacekeeping troops to Ukraine, and European forces who deploy there may not be protected by NATO’s Article 5.
… Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that his country will “finish the job” on Iran, furthering the expectation that Israeli forces could soon strike Iranian nuclear facilities.
… The Trump administration stopped the DOGE-driven firings of hundreds of federal employees who work on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs.
… China warned of “severe damage” to its relationship with the U.S. after the State Department appeared to remove the phrase “we do not support Taiwanese independence” from an online fact sheet about the island democracy.
… And German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is bristling at what he described as Vice President J.D. Vance’s “unacceptable” interference in German politics.
Direct talks between Washington and Moscow have come together with remarkable speed. Just days after President Trump spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the two countries said they will send high-level delegations to Saudi Arabia for negotiations aimed at ending the Russia-Ukraine war, among other topics. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff will lead the American delegation. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov will lead the Russian side and will be in close contact with Mr. Putin during the meetings in Riyadh, according to Russian media.
Mr. Rubio and other leading U.S. officials defended their outreach to Russia during a media blitz on Sunday, even as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed that his country would never accept a deal struck in talks between the U.S. and Russia that did not involve Ukraine. The Trump administration maintains that the war, now approaching its third anniversary, cannot be ended on the battlefield.
Mr. Zelenskyy, meanwhile, is in Abu Dhabi this morning. The United Arab Emirates has long been viewed as a potential site for talks between Russia and Ukraine.
The U.S. China. Russia. Britain. Israel. France. South Korea. All of those major players in the global defense industry have converged on Abu Dhabi this week for the weeklong International Defense Exhibition and Conference (IDEX) and the Naval Defense and Maritime Security Exhibition (NAVDEX). And for the first time, nations including Qatar, Ethiopia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Cyprus will join the conference, billed as the largest exposition of cutting-edge tech in defense and security in the Middle East.
Top U.S. companies — L3 Harris, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, AeroVironment and a host of others — will be exhibiting.
National Security Editor Guy Taylor is leading a Threat Status team on the ground at IDEX 2025, which takes place against a high-stakes backdrop of simmering U.S.-China tensions, the unfolding push by the Trump administration to end the Russia-Ukraine war, and growing speculation that Israel could soon launch more direct strikes against Iran.
One of the biggest questions is what the Chinese will participate in this year. At an air show in November, Beijing unveiled its J-35 stealth fighter, which U.S. officials say was built using stolen American military technology, Mr. Taylor reports.
Part of Mr. Trump’s motivation behind his stunning Gaza Strip proposal — which centered on relocating 2 million Palestinians out of the war-torn enclave and redeveloping it into the “Riviera of the Middle East” — may have been to shock the Arab world into action. And on that point, he may have succeeded.
Washington Times correspondent Jacob Wirtschafter offers this in-depth dispatch from Qatar and dives into this real-world impact of Mr. Trump’s controversial proposal: It has rocked Arab states and forced them to reconsider an endgame to the latest eruption of Palestinian-Israeli violence. Analysts and officials across the region say Mr. Trump’s “disruptor diplomacy” exposes deep divisions among Arab states. The proposal, those analysts say, could force a group of otherwise divided Arab powers to coalesce around a plan they can all support, lest Mr. Trump’s proposal remain on the table as the only concrete idea for the future of Gaza.
Mr. Netanyahu held a joint press conference in Jerusalem over the weekend with Mr. Rubio, and the Israeli prime minister again praised the “bold vision” put forward by Mr. Trump. With the U.S. and Israel seemingly in lockstep on the Gaza development plan, now it’s time for a counteroffer from Arab world powers.
China’s People’s Liberation Army is holding “rehearsals” for an eventual attack on Taiwan, a move that could kill 1 million people whether or not the U.S. decides to directly intervene on Taiwan’s behalf.
That was the stark warning from Adm. Sam Paparo, the head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, during remarks at a forum in Hawaii last week. National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz has all the details on the blunt assessment of Beijing’s intentions.
“The People’s Republic of China has embarked on a dangerous course, and [is] on a dangerous course,” Adm. Paparo said. “Their aggressive maneuvers around Taiwan right now are not exercises, as they call them. They are rehearsals. They are rehearsals for the forced unification of Taiwan to the mainland.”
Those comments are something of a tonal shift from military leaders, many of whom under former President Biden tried to downplay the short-term military risk coming from communist China or the prospects for a U.S.-China war.
Mr. Vance and Mr. Hegseth made waves with their remarks last week in Europe. But both men delivered the kinds of hard truths that Europe needed to hear, according to Washington Times columnist Michael McKenna.
Mr. McKenna writes that the two men touched a nerve in Europe because leaders on the continent realize, whether they want to admit it or not, that they’re not the influential global players they used to be.
“Europe is in decline just about everywhere,” Mr. McKenna writes. “As the Ukraine experience shows, European militaries cannot project power even a few miles beyond their borders. The world we have known for the past 1,000 years or so — where Europe set the tone and led the way in science and technological advances, such as weapons, building, agriculture, seafaring and exploration — has passed away in a single lifetime.”
• Feb. 20 — A Discussion of “Arabs and Israelis: From Oct. 7 to Peacemaking,” Wilson Center
• Feb. 20 — Hearing to Examine Research Security Risks Posed by Foreign Nationals from Countries of Risk Working at the Department of Energy’s National Laboratories, Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
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