Wednesday’s meeting at the NATO headquarters in Brussels was, on paper, about coordinating military aid for Ukraine and welcoming the new US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth into the international fold. In practice, it was a day that saw the Trump administration upend the alliance’s approach to this almost 3-year-old war, lay out a vision that seemed to deliver some of Moscow’s key demands, and leave NATO allies fighting to avoid the appearance of disunity.

There were, of course, clear signs this was not going to be smooth sailing. US President Donald Trump fired the starting gun on this critical week of diplomacy by pouring cold water on Ukraine’s hopes of a favorable peace deal.

But coordinating with allies may not be a top priority for the Trump administration. Overnight it has lurched the NATO alliance from a stated policy that Ukraine was on an “irreversible path” to membership, to Hegseth’s blunt statement: “The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement.”

Several of his European counterparts tried to argue the two positions were not incompatible.

Whether or not this, or Hegseth’s comment that Ukrainian ambitions to return to pre-2014 borders were “unrealistic,” were meant as a break with previous policy, one thing is clear. “The US is quite happy to march to its own beat and leave Europe and Ukraine to pick up the pieces,” said Matthew Savill, Director of Military Sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank in London.

“European countries have to get with the mood music … If they think any US official or politician is going to stick their neck out for Europe, on Europe’s behalf, they are kidding themselves.”

News at the end of the day in Brussels, that while NATO ministers tried to coordinate efforts to counter Russian aggression, President Trump spent 90 minutes on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin is a case in point. Ukraine’s Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, when asked about this at a briefing, simply walked away from the cameras.

Amongst all the status-quo-churning statements from the Trump administration, there is one hard truth Europe must face. The 2% defense spending target, which a third of NATO members haven’t even hit yet, is looking increasingly outdated. Hegseth even name-checked his boss to drive the message home.

“Two percent is not enough; President Trump has called for 5%, and I agree,” said Hegseth. “The United States will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency.” And the urgency is not only coming from the US. “If we stick to 2% we cannot defend ourselves in four to five years,” said Rutte. “It is crucial that Russia’s rearmament is met by us.”

On this point, it’s hard to find a NATO minister that wouldn’t say they agree. Still, it is what they actually do that will matter. “We heard (Hegseth’s) call for European nations to step up. We can, and we will,” promised UK Defense Secretary Healey.

And yet the UK’s government has committed to raising its spending only from the current 2.3% level to 2.5% of GDP, without specifying a time period.

Caught between a United States promising “resourcing trade-offs” as it prioritizes the Pacific, and a Russia whose defense industry is already vastly outproducing the EU, this may be a reality NATO’s European members can no longer just agree with.

A satirical petition ostensibly aiming to crowdfund a trillion dollars to allow Denmark to buy California has received more than 200,000 signatures.

“Have you ever looked at a map and thought, ‘You know what Denmark needs? More sunshine, palm trees, and roller skates.’ Well, we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make that dream a reality,” the petition reads.

“Let’s buy California from Donald Trump! Yes, you heard that right. California could be ours, and we need your help to make it happen.”

The petition comes after the US president expressed a renewed interest in controlling Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory.

It lays out a number of reasons why Denmark would benefit from the mooted purchase of California, including improved weather, a secure supply of avocados and tech dominance.

“Gaining an extra bunch of Tech bros? Great! It is what every democracy needs,” reads the petition, which adds that Denmark will also be able to “protect the free world” and rename Disneyland “Hans Christian Andersenland.”

“Mickey Mouse in a Viking helmet? Yes, please,” it adds.

All that remains is to raise the crowdfunding goal of $1 trillion, “give or take a few billion,” and send in “our bestest negotiators – Lego executives and the cast of Borgen.”

“California will become New Denmark. Los Angeles? More like Løs Ångeles,” the petition continues.

“We’ll bring hygge to Hollywood, bike lanes to Beverly Hills, and organic smørrebrød to every street corner. Rule of law, universal health care and fact based politics might apply.”

Trump, who took office on January 20, has described US control of Greenland as an “absolute necessity.”

Despite those rebuttals, the debate over Greenland’s future has been stirred up by growing speculation over its independence movement.

In his New Year’s speech, Greenland’s prime minister said the island should break free from “the shackles of colonialism” – though the speech did not mention the United States.

Clarity is beginning to form around US President Donald Trump’s plans for ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, with his administration appearing to accept some of the Kremlin’s key demands that Ukraine should not join NATO or return to its pre-2014 sovereign borders.

Amid the dust of what looks to be Trump’s blowing up of the previous US position on peace, another administration priority is also coming into focus: an attention shift away from Europe and toward China.

Speaking at a meeting in Brussels Wednesday, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that “stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe.”

One focus needed to be US border security, he told counterparts gathering to discuss Ukrainian security – another was Beijing.

“We also face a peer competitor in the Communist Chinese with the capability and intent to threaten our homeland and core national interests in the Indo-Pacific,” Hegseth said. “The US is prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific, recognizing the reality of scarcity, and making the resourcing tradeoffs to ensure deterrence does not fail.”

Beijing is no doubt paying close attention to Hegseth’s pronouncement, which comes as the US earlier this month ramped up its economic competition with China, launching a blanket 10% tariff on all Chinese imports, with the potential of more to come.

China has welcomed what had been an unexpectedly warm start to the second round of a Trump administration, with the US leader repeatedly expressing positive views about Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the potential for cooperation between the two.

Officials in Beijing had also likely been hoping that Trump’s upending of US foreign policy would weaken American alliances in Asia. China has bristled at a tightening of relationships between the US and partners such as Japan, South Korea and the Philippines under former President Joe Biden.

Now, it’s clear they’ll be watching closely how the US may adjust its posture and its focus in a region where Beijing hopes to expand its influence and assert its claims over the South China Sea and the self-ruling democracy of Taiwan.

They’re also likely to have another pressing concern: whether Trump’s overtures to Russian President Vladimir Putin will pull Moscow – a critical ally for Xi in his rivalry with the West – away from Beijing and toward Washington.

Xi and Putin memorably declared a “no limits” partnership days before Russian tanks rolled over the border to Ukraine. The two have continued to tighten ties during the war, with China emerging as a key economic lifeline for Russia, including through the provision of dual-use goods that NATO leaders said were powering Russia’s defense industrial complex. Beijing has defended that as normal trade.

The relationship has long been predicated on the two leaders’ shared disdain for NATO and US alliances more broadly. Putin and Xi have worked in tandem to build out non-Western international groupings, while ramping up joint military drills and supporting one another in forums like the United Nations.

That means a warming of Putin’s ties with Washington could have a far-reaching impact on China’s ability to push back against pressure from the US and advance Xi’s vision for an alternative to an America-led world order.

It was supposed to be the moment US President Donald Trump’s vision of bringing peace to the Middle East by redeveloping the war-torn Gaza strip into “Riviera” style premium housing and permanently relocating its more than 2 million residents finally got a reality check.

Instead, it was the moment the true scale of the challenge facing America’s Arab allies became clear.

When King Abullah II of Jordan met Trump at the Oval Office on Tuesday, there were widespread expectations that his visit – as the first Arab leader to meet the US president since his reelection – might help to rein in some of the more far-fetched elements of Trump’s vision. (To recap, Trump apparently envisions the US taking control of the territory, rehoming millions of Palestinian refugees in Jordan and Egypt, replacing the rubble of Gaza with glass towers with Mediterranean views and inviting “the world’s people” to move in.)

But it became clear almost as soon as Trump began talking at their joint press conference that he had no intention whatsoever of softening his proposal.

“I believe we will have a parcel of land in Jordan, a parcel of land in Egypt, we may have some place else but I think when we finish our talks we’ll have a place where they’ll live very happily,” Trump said, before brushing aside questions about what authority the US might wield to take control of the Palestinian enclave.

The embarrassment to King Abdullah, whose eyes twitched extensively as he listened quietly beside the US president, was clear.

After all, this was a man who was expected to – diplomatically – state in clear terms the Arab world’s almost universal opposition to the plan.

Instead, and despite his clear discomfort, he appeared to nod and praised Trump as a man of peace who could take the Middle East “across the finish line.”

Asked whether he agrees with Trump’s proposal to rehome the Palestinians, the king deflected, instead revealing that “Egypt and the Arab countries” had an alternative plan that would be revealed in due course and advising, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“You could see the discomfort on the king’s body language and his face … they were completely talking past each other,” said Khaled Elgindy, visiting scholar at the Georgetown University Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.

A ‘bad bet’

Until that point, Egypt had said nothing publicly about having a counter-plan. Afterwards it issued its own vague statement, in which it referred to an “intention to present a comprehensive vision for the reconstruction of Gaza.”

Meanwhile, Arab social media erupted in criticism of the king, who was widely criticized for appearing to capitulate to Trump.

In what looked like an attempt at damage limitation, the king posted on X that he had “reiterated Jordan’s steadfast position against the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.”

“This is the unified Arab position. Rebuilding Gaza without displacing the Palestinians and addressing the dire humanitarian situation should be the priority for all,” he wrote.

But by then, in many Arab eyes, the damage had already been done.

While Abdullah may have impressed Trump with his offer to take 2,000 of Gaza’s sick children, it’s clear his visit did little to persuade the president away from his desire to take Gaza. If anything, the limpness of the opposition may only have encouraged Trump.

“We’re going to have it (Gaza), we’re going to keep it, and we’re going to make sure that there’s going to be peace and there’s not going to be any problem, and nobody’s going to question it, and we’re going to run it very properly,” Trump said.

Randa Slim, a fellow at the foreign policy institute at Johns Hopkins University, said the king had made a “bad bet” in traveling to Washington.

“If the visit was aimed at helping sway Trump to abandon his plan, King Abdullah was unsuccessful because Trump doubled down. And it did not put the Jordanian king in the best light with his own population, he did not come across in the public presser as strongly pushing back against a plan which the majority of his population opposes,” she said.

“I don’t think it was a success on a regional and domestic level,” Slim added.

A precarious position

The exchange between Trump and the king reveals the precarious position that America’s Arab allies could find themselves in over the next four years, especially those, like Jordan, who have relatively little in terms of natural resources to offer the self-styled master of the deal.

As Arab countries scramble to make a counteroffer to Trump’s Gaza plan, they are also rushing to salvage the ceasefire agreement, which is currently under threat of collapse after Hamas said it would postpone Saturday’s scheduled hostage release in response to alleged Israeli violations of the deal in recent weeks.

If there is a silver lining to the “madness coming out of Trump’s mouth,” said Elgindy, it’s that it spurred Arab states to think about what their own, more credible alternative would be – even if that action is long overdue.

“It took disastrous statements by Trump and the possible collapse of the ceasefire for them to finally spur into action … that should have happened months ago,” he said.

The plan alluded to by King Abdullah, to be presented by Egypt after being discussed with one of Trump’s closest Arab allies, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, could present a vision where Arab countries help clear the rubble and rebuild Gaza over several years, without Palestinians leaving and in line with the two-state solution.

But the finer details of the Arab plan are yet to be revealed and the danger is that any delay will only serve to encourage Trump further. Egypt has said there will be an Arab emergency summit at the end of the month.

For some Arab leaders, the hope is that Trump will at some point come to his own conclusion that his plan is “not practical” and “unimplementable,” Slim said, and that there will be so many obstacles in implementing it that he will abandon it.

Even then, the onus would be on America’s Arab allies to come up with a solution to a decades-old problem, and the king’s visit to DC has hardly inspired confidence.

“They are caught between a rock and a hard place … they will have to come up with an alternative plan that has to involve dollars for Trump to buy into it, and one that he can spin as a win,” Slim added.

“Come on,” said Elgindy. “Nobody has a plan?”

Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa claimed, without evidence, that the first round of the country’s presidential election was rife with “irregularities” after he made it to the second round with a slim lead — which authorities have called a technical tie with his leftist rival Luisa González.

“There have been many irregularities,” Noboa said in a Tuesday interview streamed on the presidency’s Facebook and YouTube pages. “We kept counting, we kept checking in certain provinces that there were things that didn’t add up. They even didn’t add up with the OAS (Organization of American States) quick count, which gave us a higher figure.”

Noboa even suggested that “armed groups” were forcing voters to cast their ballots for his opponent.

After the interview, the OAS Electoral Observation Mission, which had been monitoring the election, issued a statement denying irregularities in the result.

It said that “the results presented by the National Electoral Council (CNE) of Ecuador coincide with the data obtained through the quick count conducted by the Mission, and remain within the margin of error.”

It added that its mission has “neither identified nor received any indication of widespread irregularities that could alter the election results.”

Ecuador’s elections agency issued a statement on Tuesday, hours after Noboa’s interview, saying that it was committed to “guaranteeing fair and transparent elections.”

It was not only Noboa complaining about the vote. Prior to his allegations, González made a similar claim on Monday in an interview with local channel Teleamazonas, saying that there were “inconsistencies” in the vote in certain provinces throughout Ecuador.

“We do not trust CNE,” González added, without offering evidence to support her allegations.

The European Union’s observation mission to Ecuador pronounced the election “transparent, well-organized, and peaceful” on Tuesday, and pushed back against any allegations of fraud.

“Disinformation was rife, with particularly virulent narratives of fraud towards the end of the campaign,” the Election Observation Mission said in their statement, which did not mention either candidate by name.

Ruling by decree

Pinto noted that the president has made many of his more notable decisions by decree, including deploying the army to Ecuador’s streets to combat gangs and building a new prison for 800 of the country’s most violent criminals.

Noboa last year stunned much of Latin America when he ordered police to storm the Mexican embassy in Quito to arrest former vice president Jorge Glas. The violation of diplomatic protocol led many leaders across the region to denounce Noboa’s actions.

“Maybe he thinks that the government is like the private sector,” Pinto mused. “In his companies, he can order everything, and he thinks that in the state, he can do the same thing. But it’s not possible.”

As to Gonzalez, Pinto said her claim might be due to her team being “sure they were going to win.”

Rampant crime has transformed the once tranquil country into one plagued by violence and turf wars between drug cartels.

Much of the violence has centered around the country’s coast, in provinces where Noboa’s campaign fared poorly. Guayas province, for example, experienced over 3,000 homicides in 2024, public data shows. According to the latest tallies on Wednesday, Gonzalez earned nearly 49% of the vote there compared to Noboa’s 43.7%.

“You have to understand, we have almost 10% of the population that votes for Luisa – not because they think Luisa is a good person,” said Pinto. “They vote for Luisa because they don’t want to vote for Noboa.”

Noboa’s statement about armed groups supposedly forcing voters to support his opponent is “dangerous,” Pinto said, “because he’s saying we have no sovereignty, we have no control over these areas.”

The assertion amounts to an endorsement from the sitting president that Ecuador is a “narco state,” Pinto added.

Nights out drinking can often end badly. But in Japan, they have a habit of going spectacularly wrong for government employees – who on at least two occasions in recent years have lost sensitive personal data after a few too many beers.

An employee of the Finance Ministry’s customs and tariff bureau went drinking with a colleague after work last Thursday, in the city of Yokohama south of Tokyo, according to public broadcaster NHK.

Within five hours, the man had nine glasses of beer, it reported. It wasn’t until he had left the restaurant, gotten on a train and traveled home that he realized his bag – containing highly sensitive information – was missing.

The employee had received the documents at a meeting earlier that day, the ministry said. Also in the bag was the employee’s work laptop, containing personal information about the man and his colleagues.

The ministry apologized to the public for “damaging” their trust, promising to punish the employee, according to NHK. So far, there have been no reports that the lost information has been used illegally, it said.

It may sound like an astonishing blunder – but it’s not the first time something like this has happened.

In 2022, another government worker lost a USB flash drive containing the personal details of every resident of the city of Amagasaki, northwest of Osaka.

The man had fallen asleep on the street after drinking alcohol at a restaurant, and when he woke up, his bag containing the flash drive was gone, NHK reported at the time.

The flash drive contained the names, birth dates, and addresses of 465,177 people – the city’s entire population. It also contained sensitive information including tax details, bank account names and numbers, and information on households receiving public assistance such as childcare payments.

A culture of drinking, and retro tech

While these two incidents represent unusually embarrassing nights out, Japan has long been notorious for its heavy drinking work and office culture.

It’s not unusual to see groups of salarymen in business suits chugging beer at izakaya pubs late into the evening or slumped in the middle of the street after consuming too much.

Japan’s health ministry warned of the dangers of excessive drinking in 2021, calling it a “major social problem.”

These marathon drinking sessions serve to encourage business relations with colleagues and clients, often helping secure deals and curry favor in the workplace. But the heavy drinking habits are also a reflection of Japan’s grueling work culture – with employees traditionally working brutal hours under immense pressure with stagnant salaries.

Even as Japan’s government tries to ease the pressure – drafting legislation to prevent death and injury from excessive work hours, and introducing a four-day workweek for Tokyo government employees – old habits die hard.

Combine that drinking culture with Japan’s particularly old-fashioned preference for analog technologies and the risk increases of sensitive data going astray.

Japan’s bureaucratic systems are famously slow to change, with a reliance on technologies and systems that are obsolete in many other parts of the world – hence employees’ use of hard drives, paper documents and other easily-lost items.

This was highlighted in 2018 when the then cybersecurity minister shocked the public by saying he’d never used a computer – a claim he later walked back after it made international headlines.

The massive gap in modern technology became clear during the Covid-19 pandemic when the government’s efforts toward mass vaccination and testing revealed the inefficiencies of paper filing and other outdated systems, Reuters reported.

A digital agency was soon set up to overhaul the government’s internal systems. The new digital minister declared a “war on floppy disks” – which were only phased out across the government in 2024, long after other major economies and world leaders had stopped using them.

The agency has also targeted fax machines and traditional carved seals used instead of signatures to sign documents in Japan.

The sewing machines and computers sit collecting dust in the dark. They were once tools of hope and empowerment, a promise for those seeking to build a life for themselves.

This abandoned workshop is no ordinary factory. It is a vocational school in Cali, southwest Colombia, run by local contractors of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and was once a route for Venezuelan migrants like Alexandra Guerra to develop the skills to join the shoemaking industry.

The school offered the 25-year-old single mother of two a way to provide for her children, younger sister, and mother. USAID was even going to pay Guerra a daily subsidy while she looked for work.

But she saw her hopes crushed when the White House halted foreign aid last month. Her classroom was shuttered. Courses ceased. And the prospects of staying in Colombia looked bleak once again.

US President Donald Trump’s sweeping changes to foreign assistance led to the rapid dismantling of USAID. A freeze was put on foreign aid, USAID staffers worldwide were recalled, and several were placed on leave in the president’s apparent attempt to shut down the agency — which he had declared a waste of money.

But in Latin America, USAID had helped create economic opportunities for people like Guerra, according to the agency’s website before it was taken offline, giving migrants a degree of stability and, often, a reason to stay.

Its proponents say USAID helped curb migration at its root – the same phenomenon the Trump administration wants to stop with policies like mass deportations from the US, ICE raids, and reinforcement at the southern border.

Gustavo Vivas, the project director of the USAID program Guerra was enrolled in, says the new policy of cuts is contradictory.

‘Any country will do’

Home to the largest Venezuelan migrant population in the world, Colombia is full of people with stories like Guerra’s.

In 2019, she left her village in Cojedes, Venezuela, and her family behind, making the trek to Colombia on foot. She was able to reunite with her family a year later after they joined her amid the pandemic lockdowns.

Last year, Guerra applied to the Safe Mobility Program as she set her sights on migrating to the United States legally.

Programs like Safe Mobility were Biden administration initiatives to offer legal routes for migrants in difficult situations to relocate safely in the US, such as Venezuelans and Nicaraguans fleeing authoritarian regimes.

But Guerra’s hopes were dashed when the program was shut down and her application was suspended last month, just a week before her classes were cancelled.

She has instead set her sights on migrating to Europe – where she would have to make the journey alone once again while her sons, aged four and eight, stay behind with their grandmother.

“Regardless that it’s not going to be the US, any country will do,” she said. “I want to work and earn enough to open my own business in Venezuela, one day… Right now, I’m a candidate for a job at an Italian airport. My doubt was that because Safe Mobility had shut, maybe the other [non-US] programs would also shut,” she said.

Guerra isn’t likely to be the only migrant in Colombia with dreams of leaving the country.

Colombian officials say closing USAID will push even more people to migrate as their country was one of the largest recipients of US aid funds in the world, with more than 82 programs worth almost $2 billion currently suspended because of Trump’s order.

‘Immigrants don’t leave their country just because they want to’

She credits the team at the Cali vocational center for providing guidance through psychologists, advisors and mentors to support her beyond the classroom.

Yet, almost five years after settling down in Cali, Olimpio hasn’t given up the dream of moving to another country that could offer more opportunities than Colombia. Moving to the US is on the cards, but Olimpio says she would only do it via legal channels.

“A migrant is not just a face on social media, we are people!” she said, tears welling in her eyes while pointing out that many Venezuelans are fleeing disastrous economic conditions and brutal repression back home.

“Immigrants don’t leave their country just because they want to,” she explained.

Aid workers in turmoil

It’s not just migrants who are at the receiving end of the gutting of USAID. Colombian aid workers employed by US-funded programs have also found their lives upended.

One aid worker described an email she received from her employer, an NGO, announcing the suspension of US funding for her program.

“In the email they said: ‘We understand you have questions, and most likely we don’t have answers for them…’ I think that sums everything up pretty well: nobody knows anything other than the funding has been frozen,” said the aid worker, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of possible repercussions.

At the shuttered Cali vocational center, Olimpio says it saddens her to know others cannot access what USAID offered her. These are people who she says: “literally depend on what they learn.”

“There are people right now who are waiting for their opportunity, just like I waited and got it,” she said. “They don’t know if they’ll get it.