John Pietro

Just 38 percent of Americans “support deploying US troops to defend Taiwan from a military attack by China” according to a Reuters/Ipsos released this week, with 42 percent opposing and 20 percent unsure. Vivek Ramaswamy, among the top contenders for the 2024 GOP nomination, also recently said that the US should only defend Taiwan until “we have semiconductor independence.” Add to this the Biden administration’s unwillingness to spend what is needed to build up the Taiwanese military and its failure to adequately support Ukraine — and anyone who values a safe, free, prosperous and stable world should be concerned. Because defending Taiwan from a revanchist, imperialist and brutal Chinese Communist Party is at the heart of America’s national interest.

A US soldier, Private Second Class Travis King, entered North Korea through the Joint Security Area (JSA) today for currently unknown reasons. “It's clear that he willfully, of his own volition, crossed the border,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a briefing Tuesday afternoon. According to the Wall Street Journal, King apparently had “served time in detention” in the South and was heading back to the US when he decided to participate in a tour of the JSA. Another individual on the tour says that King laughed as he crossed into the North. The reasons for King’s actions are still not clear. US soldiers have deserted and defected to North Korea before, often to get out of service, but it is an exceedingly rare occurrence.

Shortly before his trip to Europe and the NATO summit in Lithuania, President Biden told CNN that he does not think Ukraine has an easy path to NATO membership. “I don’t think it [Ukraine] is ready for NATO,” he said to Fareed Zakaria. “I don’t think there is unanimity in NATO about whether or not to bring Ukraine into the NATO family now, at this moment, in the middle of the war.” “I mean what I say," Biden continued, "we are determined to commit [defend] every inch of territory that is NATO territory... If the war is going on, then we are all in a war.” That Ukraine would not join NATO in the middle of a war has generally been accepted due to the risks. Membership would come, albeit on a longer timeline, and after the war is over.

The leader of Russia’s Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, claimed Friday that Russian forces targeted his private military company, with “many victims.” The attack occurred after Prigozhin produced a video where he lambasted the Russian military brass for peddling falsehoods about the war to the Russian public and to President Putin. “The ministry of defense is trying to deceive the public and the president and spin the story that there was insane levels of aggression from the Ukrainian side,” said Prigozhin according to The Guardian, “and that they were going to attack us together with the whole NATO block.” “When Zelensky became president,” he added, “he was ready for agreements. All that needed to be done was to get off Mount Olympus and negotiate with him.

Over the weekend, US special forces evacuated American embassy personnel from Sudan in a nearly day-long operation. The evacuation came as the African country descended into near civil war on April 15 when the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces took their disagreements to the battlefield. US forces managed to get all of the personnel — along with a number of foreign individuals — out of the country safely, flying about 800 miles from Khartoum back to Djibouti in three heavy-lift helicopters. The decision to leave an embassy is not an easy one, and is typically reserved for only the most severe circumstances (Kyiv in early 2022, for example).

Reports of the death of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency are greatly exaggerated. Fortunately for America, while the dollar is by no means unsinkable, it will not be toppled anytime soon. Threats exist, but rather than coming from abroad, to paraphrase Lincoln, they spring up among us. How the US manages its economy will largely be the determinant factor in the dollar’s continued supremacy. Currently, the dollar makes up about 58 percent of foreign currency reserves worldwide, well ahead of its competitors. The next closest currency is the euro at 20 percent, and then the yen and pound sterling, both at about 5 percent — China’s renminbi is at a paltry 3 percent (just ahead of a real powerhouse, the Canadian dollar).