Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Situation Report, where one of your co-authors managed to secure FIFA World Cup tickets for next year but is refusing to take the other one along.
Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: Australia’s leader prepares to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump in the shadow of an AUKUS review, Trump resumes his balancing act on the war in Ukraine, and a key U.S. government advisor is arrested.
Third time’s the charm for Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who will finally get a bilateral sit-down with Trump at the White House on Monday, after two missed opportunities that were widely perceived as snubs from Trump back home. The two leaders were scheduled to meet at the G-7 summit in Canada in June, but Trump left the gathering early to deal with an escalating security situation in the Middle East. Trump also left Albanese off his bilateral meeting schedule at the United Nations General Assembly last month, though the duo did meet at a larger reception that Trump hosted on the sidelines and took a selfie together before scheduling Monday’s White House meeting.
The delay in securing a meeting with Trump, while the subject of endless headlines, may not necessarily hurt Albanese domestically. Trump remains hugely unpopular among the Australian public, with a new poll this week by the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre indicating that only 16 percent of Australians feel the second Trump administration has been good for Australia.
However, that poll also shows overwhelming support for the U.S.-Australia alliance and a recognition of Washington’s importance, illustrating the political tightrope that the Australian prime minister will have to walk on Monday.
“Kissing the ring is going to backfire domestically,” said Nishank Motwani, a senior fellow and director of alliance strategy at ASPI USA, an Australian government-funded think tank. At the same time, Albanese will want to leave Trump with an appreciation of Canberra’s value to Washington while avoiding the Oval Office discomfort—or worse—that some other leaders have endured.
There are a lot of potential avenues for discomfort. Albanese has only committed Australia to increasing defense spending to 2.3 percent of its GDP from its current 2 percent level, despite the Trump administration’s demand that that number be 3.5 percent. The Australian leader has also sought to mend ties with China from their low ebb under his predecessor, Scott Morrison, a recognition that Beijing is an indispensable economic partner despite being also seen as a significant security threat.
But the biggest thorn by far is submarines.
AUKUS awkwardness. The Trump administration caused considerable consternation in Canberra this summer when it confirmed that it was conducting a review of the AUKUS agreement, a pact among Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States to provide Australia with U.S. nuclear-capable submarines starting in 2032 in addition to jointly developing more submarines and cooperating on critical defense-related technologies.
While many experts say it is customary and not unreasonable for a new government to review such an important deal, Australian worries stem from Trump’s ambivalence toward traditional U.S. alliances and his disdain for deals negotiated by his predecessors. U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon official overseeing the review, has also publicly questioned AUKUS in the past.
Colby’s comments aside, “AUKUS is so important to Australia and the United Kingdom that any review would get a lot of attention,” said Abraham Denmark, who served as senior advisor on AUKUS to the Pentagon during the Biden administration.
Recent reports suggest that the deal has passed muster, and an announcement to that effect could happen during Albanese’s visit. However, a Pentagon official overseeing the region had a far less definitive assessment earlier this month, saying that the review was ongoing.
Australians have shown ambivalence about AUKUS as well, particularly its estimated price tag of $240 billion over three decades. A poll released in July showed that 60 percent of respondents doubt that Washington will eventually deliver the submarines.
“The Australian public hasn’t bought into AUKUS fully, and that’s because the government hasn’t done a good job of explaining why it matters,” Motwani said.
AUKUS also takes up a lot of oxygen in what is a broader partnership. “AUKUS was sometimes a bit of a stalking horse for broader debates in Australia about the alliance with the United States and about China,” said Denmark, who is now a partner at the Asia Group, a Washington-based consultancy.
Deal sweeteners. Albanese has a lot to offer that could appeal to Trump’s transactional nature, particularly Australia’s stockpiles of rare earths and critical minerals that power key technologies and military applications. China dominates the mining and production of rare earths and has shown a willingness to weaponize it, as it has repeatedly done during trade negotiations with Washington. Australia is reportedly preparing an agreement to offer investors in partner countries access to the country’s critical minerals. That could give Trump a hedge, if not a full-blown alternative, to China.
But the big question remains whether it will be enough. “Trump looks at all of the alliances as leverage,” said Motwani. “If you give away too much in your first meeting, he’s going to come back for more.”
Ashley Tellis, a senior State Department advisor on South Asian affairs and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has been arrested and charged with unlawful retention of national defense information. Tellis, who also worked as a Pentagon contractor and previously served on the National Security Council under President George W. Bush, allegedly had over 1,000 pages of secret or top-secret documents at his home in Virginia.
“We are aware of the allegations against Ashley J. Tellis. He is now on administrative leave, including from his role as Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs,” Katelynn Vogt, Carnegie’s vice president for communications, said in a statement provided to SitRep.
In other news, dozens of reporters turned in their press badges to the Pentagon this week after rejecting Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s restrictive new rules for the media. The new policy threatens to revoke credentials of journalists who seek and report information not approved for public release (a key aspect of the job). The vast majority of news outlets—including Hegseth’s former employer, Fox News—refused to agree to the new restrictions. Even right-leaning outlets such as Newsmax would not sign on.
The Pentagon Press Association said a majority of its members rejected Hegseth’s policy “over its implicit threat of criminalizing national security reporting and exposing those who sign it to potential prosecution.” The Pentagon has referred to the new rules as “basic, common-sense guidelines to protect sensitive information.”
Adm. Alvin Holsey, head of the U.S. military’s Southern Command, will step down at the end of this year after 37 years of service, Hegseth confirmed in a tweet Thursday. Holsey was overseeing the Trump administration’s controversial operations against what it claims are drug trafficking boats off the coast of Venezuela, and the New York Times reported that he had expressed reservations about those operations.
What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.
Gaza truce on shaky ground. Hamas on Wednesday said it has returned all of the remains of dead hostages that it’s capable of retrieving and that it will need special equipment to gain access to the remaining deceased captives.
Since a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas began last week, the group has returned 20 living hostages and the remains of nine out of 28 deceased hostages. The delay in the return of all the hostages, a crucial aspect of the first phase of the peace deal orchestrated by Trump, could prevent the process from moving to the next phase and potentially upend the truce.
Trump on Thursday also issued a threat to Hamas, which has been engaged in a crackdown on rivals in recent days. “If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the Deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them,” he said in a post on Truth Social. It’s not clear if Trump meant that U.S. forces would enter Gaza to fight Hamas. The White House did not immediately respond to SitRep’s request for comment.
Trump chats with Putin. Trump on Thursday said he held a “very productive” phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the two are now set to meet in Budapest at an unspecified date for further talks on ending the war in Ukraine. The call came ahead of a meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday, during which they’re expected to discuss whether Washington will provide Kyiv with long-range Tomahawk missiles.
As our FP colleague Sam Skove has written, Tomahawks have a range of roughly 1,500 miles and would boost Ukraine’s capability to strike targets deep within Russia—including in Moscow. The Kremlin has warned that providing Ukraine with Tomahawks would be viewed as a major escalation.
Trump has expressed impatience with Putin over the lack of progress toward a peace deal and has repeatedly signaled that he’s open to providing Tomahawks to Kyiv to put more pressure on Moscow. But Putin also has a history of successfully pulling Trump to his side on various issues. Even if Trump does agree to send Tomahawks to Ukraine, he could impose restrictions on their use.
The CIA in Venezuela. Trump on Wednesday said he has authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela. Such operations are not typically made public, and Trump’s acknowledgment was yet another example of his unorthodox approach to the presidency.
Trump said he authorized the operations for two reasons. “No. 1, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America,” he said. “And the other thing, the drugs, we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela, and a lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea.” Trump’s announcement came as the U.S. military continues to conduct strikes on boats off the coast of Venezuela that he alleges belong to drug traffickers. Critics have condemned the strikes as an unnecessary and illegal use of military force.
The president on Wednesday also signaled that the United States could soon strike targets on land in Venezuela. There are many open questions about Trump’s aims in Venezuela and whether the ultimate goal is regime change. The Trump administration has offered a $50 million reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on drug trafficking charges.
Donald Trump stands in front of a “Peace 2025” sign with his arms outstretched.
U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he stands before a family picture during the greetings ceremony of the Gaza peace summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, on Oct. 13.Yoan Valat/AFP via Getty Images
Monday, Oct. 20: Trump is set to meet with Albanese at the White House.
The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party is scheduled to convene in Beijing for its annual plenum.
The EU Foreign Affairs Council is set to begin a multi-day meeting.
Wednesday, Oct. 22: The European Council leader summit is scheduled to be held in Brussels.
“I believe that we should uphold arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court.”
—New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, telling Fox News in an interview that he would support arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he came to New York while Mamdani was mayor.
