Threat Status for Wednesday, October 1, 2025. Share this daily newsletter with your friends, who can sign up here. Send tips to National Security Editor Guy Taylor.
The Pentagon says it will officially reduce its mission in Iraq and “transition to a lasting U.S.-Iraq security partnership,” following “success in fighting ISIS.”
… A new report from the U.K.-based Royal United Services Institute examines how Russia is helping China prepare to seize Taiwan.
… National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz was first to report in a column over the summer on the China-Russia collaboration.
… The Chinese Communist Party has abruptly replaced one of its top foreign diplomats, and questions are now swirling about his whereabouts.
… The U.N. Security Council has voted for an expanded international force to halt escalating gang violence in Haiti.
… The speeches by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Trump to top brass gathered at Quantico, Virginia, outlined fundamental shifts in how the military should function at the ground level.
… The speeches triggered blowback, particularly from Democrats, with Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Sen. Jack Reed saying that Mr. Hegseth’s “ultimatum” to top officers to “conform to his political worldview or step aside” is “profoundly dangerous.”
… The New York Times, meanwhile, homed in on one line of Mr. Trump’s speech: “We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.”
… Louisiana’s Republican governor has formally asked National Guard forces to help undermanned police in urban areas.
… And the U.S. government shutdown is here, with partisan messaging wars in full swing over who is to blame.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is voicing alarm over Mr. Trump’s plan to deploy space weapons as part of Golden Dome, expressing specific concern that the futuristic missile defense shield will neutralize Moscow’s offensive nuclear forces.
“Particular attention should be given to plans to increase the strategic components of the U.S. missile defense system, including preparations for placing interceptors in outer space,” Mr. Putin said on Sept. 22, according to Russia’s state-run Interfax agency.
Details on Golden Dome remain closely held within the Pentagon, although recent reports indicate China has similar concerns about the plan, which calls for an integrated air and missile defense system by 2029. Initial plans involve a four-layer defense with satellite-based weapons along with land-based defenses, including 11 short-range anti-missile batteries in the continental U.S. and in Alaska and Hawaii.
Louisiana Republican Gov. Jeff Landry has asked the Pentagon to deploy 1,000 National Guard troops to help fight crime in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Shreveport to compensate for the police officer shortages in his state’s three largest cities through July.
“These manpower shortages limit their ability to effectively address this public safety threat and consequently, incidents of homicide, carjacking, and gang-related violence, significantly exceed the national average,” Mr. Landry wrote Tuesday in a letter to Mr. Hegseth.
Mr. Landry wrote that he hopes the deployment mirrors the success of National Guard missions in the District of Columbia, which saw more than 2,000 officers arrive in the city amid Mr. Trump’s crime emergency, and Memphis, Tennessee, which is having the troops assist in a crackdown on violence.
China and India have long dominated Bangladesh’s politics, trade and defense, holding sway over the regime that controlled the geographically strategic nation for decades before its ouster two months ago. Washington Times reporter Vaughn Cockayne offers a deep dive on what lies ahead.
With Bangladesh now preparing to hold its first post-authoritarian democratic elections next year, Secretary-General of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party Mirza Alamgir and senior foreign policy adviser Humaiun Kabir say Dhaka must diversify its diplomatic partners. “We have a foreign policy where we are friends to everybody, and we want to be friends to America as well as India, as well as China and Europe,” Mr. Alamgir said in an exclusive interview. “In fact, the U.S. has been one of the largest investors in Bangladesh. So this would be a natural alliance between the USA and Bangladesh.”
His comments, made on the sidelines of last week’s U.N. General Assembly gathering, come amid great-power jockeying between the U.S. and China over precarious democracies in Southeast Asia.
Threat Status opinion contributor Clifford D. May zeroes in on Mr. Trump’s questioning of the U.N.’s purpose, writing in The Times that the organization has “undertaken no serious reform efforts” for nearly two decades, while the “U.N. Human Rights Council has become a club for human rights violators, including China, Cuba and Algeria.
“From 2015 to this year, the U.N. General Assembly has condemned Israel 173 times and the U.S. 11 times. China: zero. Turkey: zero. Hamas: zero,” writes Mr. May, the founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who notes how “Russia and China, now joined in a ‘no-limits’ partnership, are permanent veto-wielding members of the Security Council.
“Most of the 193 nations in the U.N. General Assembly are unfree,” he writes, adding that a likely answer to Mr. Trump’s question is that the U.N. “can be a place where leaders and rulers — let’s not confuse the two — occasionally meet for a talkfest. As for more lofty missions and global governance … well, let’s just say a noble experiment has been conducted and we now know the results.”
Joseph R. DeTrani, also a Threat Status opinion contributor, offers another take, writing in The Times that the U.N. over the coming year “will have an opportunity to help resolve a few conflicts requiring immediate attention: Ukraine, the Gaza Strip, Sudan, Haiti, Myanmar, Yemen and Libya.
“Indeed, this is its core responsibility, in line with the theme of the 80th session — ‘Better together: 80 years and more of peace, development and human rights,’” writes Mr. DeTrani, a former associate director of national Intelligence and former member of the Senior Intelligence Service of the CIA, who notes that “the 80th ordinary session of the United Nations will end on Sept. 8, 2026.”
He cites a range of global security matters where the U.N. could have an impact and relevance. “The situation in the South China Sea between China and the Philippines could escalate quickly,” Mr. DeTrani writes. “The irony is that a 2016 ruling by a U.N.-backed arbitration tribunal invalidated China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea, ruling overwhelmingly in favor of the Philippines. The ruling was deemed final and binding, although China has rejected it and continues to defy it.”
• Oct. 8 — Investing in the North Korean People: Broadening Access to Information in North Korea, Stimson Center
• Oct. 8 — Relearning Great Power Diplomacy: A Conversation with Wess Mitchell, Hudson Institute
• Oct. 13-15 — AUSA 2025 Annual Meeting & Exposition in Washington, Association of the U.S. Army (AUSA)
• Oct. 21-22 — Missile Defense Agency Small Business Conference, Tennessee Valley Chapter of the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA)
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