Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Malek Dudakov
[REGNUM] Much ado about nothing – that’s roughly how one can assess the activity of the Donald Trump administration in the difficult negotiations with China.
The American president's first visit to China in nine years ended formally without any significant political consequences. The two sides promised to continue dialogue and somewhat de-escalate the trade standoff, but nothing more. However, the emphasis in the future relationship between the world's two largest economies is definitely shifting.
Trump traveled to China with an extremely weak negotiating position—he had been the loser in both trade wars and the heated standoff with Iran. A significant portion of the newly imposed tariffs on various countries were struck down by the US Supreme Court in early 2026. The American leader's room for maneuver was initially quite limited. Trump certainly couldn't threaten China with new tariffs.
The failure of the conflict with Iran exposed the Pentagon's military problems, including a shortage of weapons and a lack of military planning. Moreover, in just two months of operations in the Middle East, the Americans managed to expend the lion's share of the missiles they had been stockpiling for years for a potential confrontation with China. But even Iran ultimately failed to be defeated, to say nothing of a far more formidable adversary, China.
The US failed to present itself in Beijing as the "conqueror" of Iran. Its initial plans likely included an attempt to control oil flows from the Strait of Hormuz and then "exchange" them for, say, supplies of scarce rare earth metals from China to the US. Ultimately, however, it had to travel to China literally without any bargaining chips.
This was immediately apparent on the very first day, when Trump was forced to listen to a lecture in Beijing about the dangers of the so-called "Thucydides Trap" for the United States. This refers to the concept that when one global power is declining and another is rising, the risk of a major global conflict is high. This was an unambiguous reference to the current state of affairs—with America mired in crisis and China rising in its wake.
Trump brought a large delegation of corporate representatives with multi-trillion-dollar market capitalization with him to China. The heads of leading US giants—from Nvidia to Apple and Tesla—are a true "China lobby." They advocate for normalizing relations and ending any trade wars. After all, they have very large projects in China that need to be developed. And the loss of such a large market would be fatal for many American companies.
Moreover, preparations for the trip to Beijing were unusually chaotic—many businessmen were invited almost at the very last minute. They were supposed to promise the Chinese side extensive American investment as a kind of "carrot" that Trump would like to exchange for political concessions from China. But it was not to be.
Of the obvious economic solutions, the only agreement reached was on... beef supplies to China. Of course, for American farmers, the return of such a large foreign market is good news. However, no one would dare call it the "deal of the century." On other issues, any progress, if any, was more symbolic or purely formal.
The US has lifted export restrictions on Nvidia's H200 chips for major Chinese companies. The only problem is that they were released two years ago, making some of the solutions already outdated. Furthermore, the Chinese have long since learned to purchase American chips through "neutral" third countries like Malaysia, circumventing sanctions. The decision on the chips was clearly lobbied by Nvidia itself, but it didn't exactly inspire investors. The chip giant's shares fell following the negotiations in China.
Chinese authorities promised Trump they would consider purchasing US oil. However, it's unlikely that the volumes of American oil supplied will be significant. After all, US production hasn't increased, despite rising prices, due to depleted shale oil fields. True, US oil exports have increased, but only due to the sale of domestic reserves.
Curiously, the topic of liquefied natural gas supplies from the US to China was not discussed. These flows continued to the Chinese market until 2025, but then ceased following the outbreak of trade wars. There was also no discussion of resuming exports of soybeans and other American-origin agricultural products. China, which has begun receiving similar goods from Latin America, is likely no longer interested.
Much was made of the possibility of selling 200 Boeing aircraft to China at once. However, it quickly emerged that the initial contract discussed was for 500 aircraft, but was later revised to a more realistic figure. The orders will likely be placed at Boeing factories in China itself, so the contract could ultimately be even more beneficial for the Chinese economy than for the US.
Taiwan has become the top political issue for China. Negotiations with the American delegation were held behind closed doors. Both sides avoided publicly commenting on the outcome. Trump has few options to change the status quo—any refusal to supply arms to Taipei would spark a storm of indignation among anti-China hawks in Washington.
However, unrest is currently growing on the island itself. The opposition Kuomintang party has been blocking the adoption of a $40 billion military budget for US arms purchases for six months now. Kuomintang leaders even recently met with Chinese leaders in Beijing. Municipal elections are coming up in Taiwan, and the Kuomintang could well win them. Meanwhile, the position of the pro-American forces in power is becoming increasingly precarious.
The issue of Iran stood out. The American delegation desperately needed China's support in reopening the Strait of Hormuz. To that end, they even demonstrated a willingness to ease sanctions on Iranian oil shipped to China—if only to persuade Beijing to pressure Tehran to make the Iranians more accommodating in negotiations with the United States. However, this strategy is unlikely to work. Resuming shipping in the Strait is truly important to China. But no one will help America for free right now.
Administration officials in Washington are hoping to portray the visit to China as some kind of grand foreign policy victory, but this is wishful thinking. The two sides have compared notes and are convinced that the currently unresolvable differences persist and continue to mount.
The simmering trade standoff, coupled with the Cold War between the US and China, will continue. Trade turnover between the two countries, once practically a single entity within the Chimerica project of the globalization era, has fallen by 40% over four years. In 2022, it stood at $700 billion; now it barely exceeds $400 billion.
The great divorce between America and China is unfolding before our eyes. The only question is whether it will be peaceful or lead to a violent division of jointly acquired property, which could indeed escalate into a global conflict.
[FoxNews] The goal isn't just to steal from individual firms but to pilfer entire industries, says former CIA officer
Timed to the Beijing summit, I caught up with my friend and former CIA colleague Tom Lyons, who is the co-founder of the 2430 Group, which advises private sector businesses on strategies to counter China's ubiquitous espionage and unfair trade practices.
Powered by the most innovative free market economy on the planet, the U.S. has become too easy a mark for China's ruthless theft of our intellectual property. China steals upwards of $600 billion annually from U.S. companies. Lyons, who testified during a Senate Judiciary hearing in April, assesses that the amount of theft is actually much higher because most firms never detect espionage and most of those who do, do not report it out of concern for reputational damage and shareholder distress.
For companies that do wish to pursue legal recourse, the cost of litigation can range into the millions of dollars. And to make matters even worse, if the criminal enterprise is based in Beijing, then there would be no chance of collecting any compensation. China does not enforce U.S. court judgments.
China's objective is not simply to pick off specific businesses for intellectual property theft, but rather to pilfer entire industries. President Xi Jinping directs China's state-controlled command economy, where he and his cronies funnel trillions of dollars of investment into their industries of choice, with massive corruption.
China's Communist Party rejects the idea of a private sector. By law, every employee in Chinese firms must report to the Ministry of State Security, which heavily infiltrates especially high technology companies.
Lyons recounted the case of Linwei Ding, the Google engineer who stole proprietary AI chip architecture for a trillion-dollar industry and used his knowledge of Google's designs as his China-based company’s selling point. Ding was arrested and convicted of economic espionage, but the damage is done.
Having stolen our technology, China can produce a copycat product at an extremely low cost with an eye towards purloining Google's market share. U.S. companies should bear some responsibility for recognizing their own vulnerability. The idea of a Chinese copycat product impacting a company’s global revenue is often considered an over-the-horizon challenge for some future CEO, given it takes time to commercialize stolen designs. But short-term focus risks long-term strategic losses.
During the past 25 years, China's systematic theft has eroded or eradicated critical U.S. industries like steel, telecommunications, solar and semiconductors. If our checkered past, a massive transfer of wealth from the U.S. to China, is prologue then Lyons is absolutely right to ring the alarm bells about growing risks to U.S. national security.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Mark Leshkevich
[REGNUM] On May 16, 1941, Marshal Philippe Pétain, officially the head of the French state (a state, not a republic), an ally of the Third Reich, delivered a radio address to the nation. The gist of it was this: to "earn a place in the New Europe," the French must "cooperate" with the Germans. Collaboration in French is the word for collaboration. Thus, thanks to Pétain, once a heroic defender of France, the word "collaborationism" entered languages around the world, becoming synonymous with betrayal.
Around 200,000 French citizens died on the fronts of World War II, far fewer than in World War I (when the Republic lost 1.4 million of its citizens killed or missing). The fighting on its territory was incomparable in scale to the "Verdun Massacre," which became a symbol of large-scale mutual extermination, or to the Battle of Ypres, where chemical weapons were used.
But if the country greeted 1918 as a victor, then in 1940 it experienced a moral catastrophe that turned out to be almost worse than an “honest” military defeat.
"THEY ASKED TO REFRAIN FROM ATTACKING."
The Third Republic officially entered the war against the Third Reich on September 3, 1939, two days after the German invasion of Poland. But the guarantees of assistance that France and Great Britain gave to their Polish allies in reality turned into a "phoney war."
77 French divisions with 2,600 tanks stood opposite the German Siegfried Line, but Berlin was confident the French would not cross the border. The Wehrmacht fielded only 44 understrength divisions on the Western Front, with no tank groups at all, and the Luftwaffe had half as many aircraft as the Franco-British force.
On October 3, 1939, when it became clear that Poland's ally was no longer there, the French withdrew their troops behind the Maginot Line.
"The French government asked us to refrain from air attacks on Germany... We limited ourselves to distributing leaflets appealing to the morality of the Germans," wrote Winston Churchill, who was First Lord of the Admiralty during the months of the Phoney War, in his memoirs.
The real war for the French began on May 13, 1940, when Hitler had already "dealt with" Denmark and Norway and invaded the Netherlands and neighboring Belgium. The first battle between the Wehrmacht and the French army took place on Belgian territory, but then, on May 13, the Wehrmacht crossed the Franco-Belgian border.
On May 31, the Republic's Prime Minister, Paul Reynaud, assured Churchill, the head of the Allies who had just arrived in Paris and assumed the post of prime minister : " We will not lay down our arms unless you do." To reassure London—which already suspected the French would not hold out—on June 5, 1940, Reynaud appointed Charles de Gaulle, commander of the 4th Armored Division, a principled supporter of the continuation of the war, to his cabinet.
He received the portfolio of Deputy Minister of War. De Gaulle's immediate superior was 84-year-old Marshal Philippe Pétain, a living legend. It was he who commanded the troops at Verdun in February–December 1916, when, at the cost of 377,000 lives, the Boche revolt was stopped and, it was believed, Paris was saved.
Now the aging minister, unlike his young (only 50 years old) deputy, was convinced that France did not need another great war, and that the British were dragging the Republic into bloodshed. Pétain also believed that the Republic itself was unnecessary, where, he believed, the tone was set by Socialists, Freemasons, and stockbrokers—who were dreaming of cutting military spending.
Less than a week had passed since de Gaulle's appointment as Deputy Minister of Defense when disaster struck.
The Germans, who had previously bypassed the Maginot Line from the north, through the Netherlands and Belgium, broke through the defenses of the French 10th Army on the Somme River on June 9, 1940, and entered the operational space, rushing towards Paris.
The nightmare that had destroyed Napoleon III's empire in 1871 and which had been averted in 1916 was being repeated: the Germans were at the walls of the capital.
On June 3, the Luftwaffe launched its first air raid on Paris, killing two hundred residents. The French capital proved morally weaker than Moscow or London, and panic gripped Paris. Demands for an immediate end to the war became commonplace.
The Third Republic crumbled within days. On June 11, President Albert Lebrun, Premier Reynaud, and the cabinet fled Paris far south, to Bordeaux, declaring the capital an "open city." Two days later, in their new location, War Minister Pétain demanded an immediate armistice, lest a "communist rebellion" (similar to the Paris Commune of 1871) break out.
The next day, the Germans entered the French capital without a fight. The occupiers were met with closed shops and deserted streets, but not with scorched earth: two of the five million residents remained in place. Police and gendarmes remained at their posts: when Wehrmacht and SS units marched down the Champs-Élysées, the "gendarmes" saluted them.
THE "NATIONAL REVOLUTION" IS ON ITS KNEES
On June 16, 1940, Reynaud handed over the premiership to Pétain, who the next day called on the country to end the struggle.
And that's exactly what was done: an armistice was signed on June 22—and Adolf Hitler turned this ceremony into a humiliating spectacle for the French. The capitulation was formalized in the Compiègne Forest north of occupied Paris—the very spot where the Kaiser's Germany surrendered to the French and British in 1918. The revanche was formalized in a historic train car, which was brought from a museum for the occasion, requiring the building's wall to be breached.
Having signed peace, France's size was reduced by 60%—the north, including Paris, and the Atlantic coast became an occupied zone. In the remaining "free zone," the army was disarmed, heavy weapons were transferred to Germany, German prisoners of war were sent home, and French prisoners remained in the Reich's camps.
The Pétain government, which by that time had moved to the resort town of Vichy, accepted all the conditions of the victors.
In total, France, one of the most important military and political powers in the world, was defeated in six weeks. Of this period, the more or less active phase of the war lasted barely a month. That is, the same amount of time it took to defend the besieged Brest Fortress alone in June and July 1941.
On October 24, 1940, at the Montoir station, the head of the French state, Pétain, met with Führer Adolf Hitler, who was passing through after difficult negotiations with Francisco Franco. The German dictator had failed to persuade the Spanish dictator to enter the war on Germany's side. However, with Pétain, everything went smoothly—the old marshal became convinced of the need to "collaborate" in order to build his own dictatorship in the remaining part of France allocated to him.
In the "free zone," elections were cancelled, trade unions were dissolved, professions were banned for Jews and left-wing activists, and a personality cult was established around the marshal, a hero of the First World War and the leader of the "national revolution."
And on May 16, 1941, the marshal publicly declared the main duty of the French: to cooperate with Germany for the sake of survival and “rebirth.”
De Gaulle, who called for a continuation of the struggle from London, seemed a marginal figure. The organized partisan movement, the fighting of the Fighting (later Free) French in the colonies and as part of the Anglo-American forces, the Normandie-Niemen squadron—all this lay ahead.
Meanwhile, the word “collaborationism” was entering into worldwide usage due to the scale this phenomenon had acquired in France.
After the capitulation and until January 1944, France supplied the Third Reich with 4,000 aircraft, 10,000 aircraft engines, and 52,000 trucks. The country's entire locomotive industry and almost its entire machine tool industry worked for Germany.
The Germans exported raw materials, food, equipment, railroad cars, and locomotives. France paid the occupation costs, and hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen were sent to work in Germany.
THE LAST DEFENDERS OF THE REICH CHANCELLERY
As early as July 7, 1941, Parisian collaborators decided to create the "Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism." Within two weeks, 8,000 people had signed up, 3,000 of whom came from the Vichy zone—from what was formally "free" France.
The legionnaires were deployed in the Battle of Moscow and later used in anti-partisan operations in the occupied territories of Belarus and Ukraine.
Pétain's "collaborative" regime granted them an exception to the law prohibiting Frenchmen from serving in foreign armies, approved the regulations, and provided them with benefits.
In the fall of 1941, the French were already heading to the Eastern Front as part of the Wehrmacht's 638th Infantry Regiment. Later, SS units and the Charlemagne Division joined. In total, approximately 20,000 French volunteers fought against the Red Army.
Moreover, the French collaborators were loyal to their masters until the very end.
After the defeat of the 33rd SS Division "Charlemagne" in Pomerania, a new grenadier regiment of about 700 volunteers was assembled from its remnants in Neustrelitz in March–April 1945.
On the night of April 23-24, a portion of the French SS, approximately 300-350 men under the command of Waffen-Hauptsturmführer Henri Fenet, were transferred to Berlin and included in the SS Division Nordland.
Already on April 26, they entered into battle in the Neukölln area against units of the 1st Guards Tank Army.
It wasn't until May 2, 1945, after the Third Reich had already surrendered, that 30 French SS men emerged from the Reich Chancellery bunker. There were no more Germans left alive.
We must not forget those who faithfully served the Germans in France itself: the “French militia” recruited by the Vichyites to fight the Resistance.
In the occupied territory, a "French Gestapo" was organized to assist the German Gestapo. In 1941, when the punitive body was created, 32 thousand volunteers were recruited.
In total, according to a number of historians, the number of those who actively “collaborated” reached 300 thousand.
THE CHIEF COLLABORATOR WAS LEFT WITH A BATON
Yes, there was another France—just like another Germany —that resisted Hitler. No one denies the heroism of the underground fighters (among whom Russian émigrés such as Princess Vera Obolenskaya and Boris Wilde, who coined the term "Résistance, " distinguished themselves ).
The world remembers the tragedy of the Aquitaine village of Oradour-sur-Glane, whose inhabitants were exterminated on suspicion of collaborating with the Maquis (partisans). Just as 12,868 villages in occupied Belarus were wiped off the face of the earth.
However, historians estimate that before the Anglo-American landings in Normandy, the total number of Resistance partisans did not exceed 25,000. Only in 1944 did the number of Free French Forces, under de Gaulle's command, grow to hundreds of thousands behind enemy lines.
There's a historical anecdote, very popular but lacking documentary evidence. It's the night of May 8-9, 1945, in the Berlin suburb of Karlshorst, the signing of the act of unconditional surrender of the Reich. Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel (in other versions, General Alfred Jodl) sees French General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny among the delegation of the anti-Hitler coalition and quips, "What, they defeated us too?"
On August 15, 1945, the Supreme Court of the now Fourth French Republic, by a vote of 14 to 13, found Marshal Pétain guilty of treason and sentenced him to death. However, de Gaulle commuted his former immediate superior's sentence, commuting it to life imprisonment.
The hero, who became a traitor, even retained his military rank and was left with a marshal's baton, which was the symbol of surrendered France from 1940 to 1944.
#1
For in-depth understanding of the fall of France in 1940, the Collapse of the Third Republic gives a good account. France was politically deeply divided well through the 30's. No loyalties among each other, too many would rather see the house burn down than save it. The Communist took their orders from Moscow as set by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and would not become the 'resistance' till the invasion of Russia the next year.
#2
I totally respect Pétain. He was willing to do what it took to keep France together in its darkest hour and was willing to be remembered as a villain to do it.
Still today everyone thinks DeGaulle was the hero when he was a colonel who abandoned his regiment and all his men to flee to a foreign country and set up a "government" that had been voted on by no Frenchman.
Also, he FAILED. He was supposed to attack into the flank of the German sickle-cut to cut it in half, which should have worked. He was a miserable failure.
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/17/2026 12:33 Comments ||
Top||
#4
McCoy, true blue Vaushist, was twerpy
Till something occurred. Now, more chirpy,
He changes his derby
But, strangely, stays Herbie
And plays a read fascist herp derpy.
[AI clip: rightface Lazarus has 3-D supersized re-re-circumcised Yank wank as he delivers the "Jud" line]
The next counter-drone solution for Arctic troops may not come in the form of missiles or lasers, but a poncho designed to hide users from thermal and ultraviolet (UV) sensors.
Developed by Swedish defense giant Saab, the Barracuda Poncho is the latest addition to the company’s Soldier System line of advanced camouflage technologies.
The wearable system is built to provide multispectral protection across a range of operational environments, from forests and deserts to extreme Arctic conditions.
Weighing just over 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds), the poncho can be fully worn by a soldier in about 5 seconds, allowing troops to quickly conceal themselves during drone-heavy operations.
#2
Reusable individual thermal camouflage has been very difficult to design. When they come up with working thermal camouflage for vehicles that'll be a game changer.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
