Vacancy in the Western Pacific
Washington pulls its last carrier out. Hanoi starts cutting steel for a navy that assumes nobody is coming.
The US Navy is about to leave the western Pacific without an aircraft carrier, according to the Associated Press. The USS George Washington is departing the region to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East, where the Lincoln has been on station past 240 uninterrupted days at sea — its May homecoming scrapped to sustain operations against Iran. Democratic lawmakers are pressing for visibility into shipboard conditions. The gap may close within months if the USS Theodore Roosevelt sails from San Diego. The signal it sends won’t close as easily. Analysts told AP that allied capitals read the absence as confirmation Washington is consumed by the Middle East, and that Beijing is content to let that impression harden — that the US is no longer the dominant power in the western Pacific. China has drilled with Indonesia, exercised near Scarborough Shoal, and run live-fire off Okinotori in recent weeks. “The administration says that the Pacific is supposed to be the most important behind the Western Hemisphere,” said Greg Poling, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Instead, the U.S. is “doing the exact opposite” of its previously expressed goal of pulling out of the Middle East. Adm. Frank Bradley was in Manila on Thursday offering reassurance. The arithmetic of eleven carriers, two shipyards and a mounting maintenance backlog offers less.
Vietnam has begun constructing its largest and most advanced domestically designed surface warship, launching the steel-cutting ceremony for a multi-purpose anti-submarine frigate at the defense ministry’s Song Thu Shipyard in Da Nang. According to multiple media outlets, the unnamed vessel is slated for completion within 36 months to bolster maritime sovereignty and counter sub-surface threats in the South China Sea. It will be built by Song Thu Corporation under the supervision of the Vietnam People’s Navy (VPN). During the frigate’s groundbreaking ceremony, Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Defense Lieutenant General Pham Hoai Nam framed the project as part of a broader effort to strengthen maritime sovereignty, modernize the navy and gain greater strategic autonomy in weapons and shipbuilding, with domestic production also aimed at reducing dependence on foreign military technology. Vietnamese officials have not publicly identified a specific adversary the frigate is intended to counter. Still, Vietnam is engaged in long-running territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea and has fought naval clashes over disputed features. While the frigate itself does little to address the significant naval power gap between Vietnam and China, it should be viewed in the context of Vietnam’s broader asymmetric naval strategy, wrote Gabriel Honrada for Asia Times.
Africa has become the proving ground for Beijing’s push to internationalise the yuan. Following talks last month between Libyan central bank governor Naji Issa and PBOC governor Pan Gongsheng, Libya’s banks are preparing to join CIPS — China’s cross-border payment system and its answer to Swift — allowing direct yuan settlement for trade. Tripoli also plans to issue panda bonds, with proceeds potentially financing post-conflict reconstruction.It joins a lengthening queue. Afreximbank and Standard Bank are already connected; Angola’s second-largest lender is preparing to follow. Zambia has gone furthest, collecting mining taxes and royalties in yuan since January. Kenya converted its railway debt to yuan last year; Ethiopia and Mozambique are negotiating the same.The scale underneath this is easy to miss. Bilateral trade hit a record $203.5 billion in the first half alone. Standard Bank — one-fifth owned by ICBC — is authorised to clear yuan across 19 African countries and has pushed $1.2 billion through CIPS since late last year. The sharper argument is defensive. Beijing-based lawyer Kai Xue points to Nigeria, forced in 2022 to buy emergency Canadian potash when sanctions blocked Russian fertiliser, and Mauritania, reportedly unable to buy Chinese boats needed to protect an offshore gas field. Neither was a sanctions target. Both paid anyway. Nobody serious claims this dethrones the dollar. But as economist Charlie Robertson notes, China is Africa’s largest trading partner — which would make the yuan the more important currency of the two on the continent, whatever the global league tables say - SCMP / Sri Lanka Guardian
Drones built by two British firms and supplied to Kyiv have struck targets on the Russian mainland for the first time, the Sunday Times reports from Kyiv and Odesa. One is the Nyan, a black carbon-fibre jet-powered aircraft with a wingspan under three metres, made by BAE subsidiary Callen-Lenz; the second manufacturer is withheld on security grounds. The economics are the story. A Storm Shadow runs upward of £750,000 and reaches about 150 miles. A long-range drone costs between £50,000 and £100,000 and reaches nearly 1,100. Britain has supplied Storm Shadows before, but the stockpile is finite and replacement is slow. Drones can be built fast, stockpiled deep, and thrown in swarms. Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign has done more than £35 billion in economic damage — refineries, naval bases, logistics hubs — producing fuel shortages and blackouts. Monday’s swarm of over 450 drones hit 16 regions, including a refinery 750 miles inside the border. Between January and June, close to 700 successful missions reached 52 of Russia’s 83 regions. A senior defence source framed the shift bluntly: Moscow has spent years keeping the West nervous, and this is London indicating it isn’t. Source: The Sunday Times
Ukrainian drones struck the Moscow region overnight on Sunday in what the provincial governor said was one of the largest attacks to have targeted the region, and which he said had left at least one person dead. In posts on Telegram, Moscow region Governor Andrei Vorobyov said that an 83-year-old man had been killed, with several more injured in Podolsk, where he said a warehouse belonging to Russia‘s largest online retailer Wildberries had been struck. He said damage had been caused at several other sites, including at a warehouse in the town of Domodedovo, close to one of Moscow’s main airports. Russia‘s Defense Ministry said it had downed 822 Ukrainian drones throughout the country. Video filmed by Reuters of the aftermath of the strike on Wildberries’ Koledino warehouse showed a large plume of smoke over the site, around 45 kilometers (28 miles) south of Moscow. Ukraine has been targeting Wildberries, which it accuses of handling military goods, in recent weeks as part of a wider bid to damage Russian economic infrastructure it sees as underpinning Moscow’s military campaign - Moscow Times
An F-18 fighter on a NATO air policing mission shot down a drone that illegally breached Romanian national airspace, the fourth unmanned aircraft shot down over the country this year, Romania’s Defense Ministry said on Sunday.
A spokesperson for NATO’s military headquarters, U.S. Army Colonel Martin O’Donnell, said the alliance is constantly on watch and prepared to defend itself from any threat. “Additional details regarding Sunday’s incident remain under investigation, but the drone appears to be Russian,” he said. NATO member Romania shares a 614 kilometers (381 miles) land border with Ukraine and has reported repeated breaches of its airspace by Russian drones over the past four years, as well as mines floating in the Black Sea across key trade and energy routes - Reuters
X users say the US Central Command published a map of the Middle East that showed Palestine’s Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank as part of Israel. The map accompanied a statement by CENTCOM on Commander Brad Cooper’s 10-day trip to the Middle East, and screenshots posted online showed Israel as including Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Social media users were quick to point it out, with one saying, “How dare you show the West Bank and Gaza as a part of Israel. This was done intentionally.” Russia’s Sputnik outlet also weighed in, saying CENTCOM “appears to have failed geography again, posting a map of the Middle East in which the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are shown as Israeli territory”. CENTCOM appears to have amended the map since. When Al Jazeera accessed the statement, the occupied West Bank was shown as separate from Israel, though Gaza was not marked as separate. Palestine is currently recognised as a sovereign state by 157 of the UN’s 193 member states - Al Jazeera
President Donald Trump’s aides admit that their boss has little interest in traveling across the country to prop up weak GOP candidates for the midterms, a new report alleges. Anonymous aides tell CNN that Trump will finally embark on a long-awaited tour to energize MAGA voters—but that traveling across the country to stump for other politicians is not a part of the job he enjoys. “He loves to travel, but he hates to travel,” an aide told the outlet. They added, “Once he’s traveling, he’s like: ‘Why am I doing this? I want to be doing other things.’” The report on Trump’s reluctance to hit the campaign trail comes as he finally gave the OK for Republicans to use millions from his personal PAC to support vulnerable Republican candidates in November, as fears grow that the GOP will lose its majorities in both chambers. “Without a doubt, we’ve got to make sure we get some of these voters who show up for Donald Trump in presidential elections to show up for these congressionals,” an adviser told the network. Yet, GOP lawmakers also worry that Trump could become a liability heading into the midterms, as Republican voters are increasingly frustrated with the president over the war in Iran and his lack of concern for the affordability crisis and rising gas prices. Trump spoke in Long Island, New York, on Friday in an effort to boost his party’s chances in the elections, including those of his gubernatorial pick, Bruce Blakeman, who is challenging New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. But during the law-and-order rally with New York police officers, Trump repeatedly fixated on the “young, beautiful girls” he sees at the White House rather than focusing on domestic policy. He also appeared to forget the name of Saritha Komatireddy, the Republican candidate for New York attorney general—whom he has endorsed—as the woman he had “just met.” - The Daily Beast
Influencer Marketing in a Turtleneck
Luxury houses have found a new species of influencer: the author, the philosopher, the literary club. The FT reports the pivot is aimed at a maturing Gen Z audience grown skeptical of the conventional sort — the bet being that cultural participation buys brand equity a sponsored post no longer can.
Scott Kerr, host of The Luxury Item, notes the obvious catch: a salon doesn’t confer depth, and unearned intellectualism is just influencer marketing in a turtleneck.
Commenters made the sharper point, which is that none of this is new. As Marilde Motta observed, Italian houses have underwritten museums and commissioned artists for generations — Guttuso designing fabrics for Trussardi in the eighties, Alviani for Maruccelli in the sixties. Fragrance is running the same play now, foregrounding the perfumer and the extraction process where it once sold only the feeling.
Miu Miu’s Literary Club, now in its fourth year under Miuccia Prada, spent three days in April at Milan’s Circolo Filologico on Annie Ernaux and Ama Ata Aidoo, closing with the reading room thrown open to the public. Whatever one makes of the handbags, that is not a turtleneck.
As it happens, last August, the Florentine house Profumoir hosted me and a gaggle of writers and influencers in its parlour on Via di San Niccolò to blend our own scents. Mine is called Danza della Foresta and people genuinely love it. The house calls itself la biblioteca olfattiva — the olfactory library, essences shelved like volumes.
Two houses, one metaphor, and the same wager: that the reading room outlasts the campaign.
The journals…
