សហគមន៍ស៊ើបការណ៍សម្ងាត់របស់លោក Trump គូសបញ្ជាក់ការគំរាមកំហែងជាសកលកំពូល

 The Trump Administration View of the Global Threat Landscape

The U.S. intelligence community recently released its annual threat assessment, which offers a window into the Trump administration’s unconventional worldview. The report’s release was overshadowed by the Signalgate scandal, but reviewing it reveals just how drastically Trump 2.0 is shifting U.S. foreign policy and national security priorities.

Drug cartels listed as top threat. The report cites drug cartels that traffic fentanyl and other synthetic opioids as the top threat, mentioning them even before state actors such as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.

“Cartels are largely responsible for the more than 52,000 U.S. deaths from synthetic opioids in the 12 months ending in October 2024 and helped facilitate the nearly three million illegal migrant arrivals in 2024, straining resources and putting U.S. communities at risk,” the assessment states.

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, zeroed in on drug cartels getting ranked above other threats at a hearing on Tuesday, noting, “For the first time, the annual threat assessment lists foreign illicit drug actors as the very first threat to our country.”

President Donald Trump has made combating fentanyl deaths a priority, linking the issue to his hard-line immigration policy as well as the tariffs he has imposed on Mexico and Canada—though just 43 pounds of fentanyl were seized at the Canadian border by U.S. authorities in the last fiscal year. The president this year designated certain cartels as foreign terrorist organizations for the first time via an executive order.

China deemed top military threat. The report states that China presents “the most comprehensive and robust military threat to U.S. national security” and notes that the Chinese military is making “steady but uneven progress on capabilities it would use in an attempt to seize Taiwan and deter—and if necessary, defeat—U.S. military intervention.”

The assessment also characterizes China as a top cyberthreat and highlights Beijing’s ambitions on artificial intelligence. The report warns of China’s ability to compromise U.S. infrastructure via its “formidable cyber capabilities” and states that Beijing “almost certainly has a multifaceted, national-level strategy designed to displace the United States as the world’s most influential AI power by 2030.”

These views don’t represent a major departure from the national security orthodoxy in Washington, where China has for years been deemed a top U.S. adversary by politicians on both sides of the aisle. Trump appears poised to continue taking a hawkish stance toward Beijing, particularly on tech and trade policy—though the president this week suggested that China could receive a tariff reduction to help push through a deal for TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the popular video-sharing app.

Russia and Ukraine. The report states that Russia has “seized the upper hand in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and is on a path to accrue greater leverage” to pressure Kyiv and the West for more concessions in peace talks.

It goes on to say the continuation of the war “perpetuates strategic risks to the United States,” including the “unintended escalation to large-scale war” and “the potential use of nuclear weapons.” Further down in the report, the intelligence community also warns that Russia possesses “the largest and most diverse nuclear weapons stockpile that, along with its deployed ground-, air-, and sea-based delivery systems, could inflict catastrophic damage to the Homeland.”

This comes as the Trump administration is rapidly pushing for an end to the war in Ukraine, which has seen the president take an aggressive stance toward Kyiv at times—including lambasting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a now-infamous Oval Office meeting last month, after which the Trump administration temporarily halted aid and intelligence sharing to Ukraine.

Critics of Trump have accused him of siding with Moscow over Kyiv and beating up on a friendly country that was attacked by a far more powerful U.S. adversary.

The intelligence community’s assessment raises questions as to whether Ukraine and Russia are committed to quickly ending the war, as Trump has pushed for.

Both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelensky “are interested in continuing discussions with the United States on how to end the war and have shown a willingness to test partial ceasefires,” the report states, before adding, “However, both leaders for now probably still see the risks of a longer war as less than those of an unsatisfying settlement.”

Trump this week said both countries want to see the war end, but he conceded that the Russians might be “dragging their feet” as Moscow continues to seek major concessions—stalling progress on even partial cease-fire agreements. So far, though, Trump hasn’t publicly pressured Putin the way he has Zelensky.

Climate change not mentioned. The assessment had a glaring omission that’s indicative of the Trump administration’s sharp departure from traditional views on national security in Washington. Though climate change has been listed as a threat in the intelligence community’s annual assessments for years, including under the first Trump administration, it was not mentioned once in the new report.

Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine, grilled Gabbard on this at Tuesday’s hearing.

“Every single one of these reports that we have had has mentioned global climate change as a significant national security threat except this one. Has something happened? Has global climate change been solved? Why is that not in this report, and who made the decision that it should not be in the report, when it’s been in every one of the 11 prior reports?” King asked.

Gabbard replied she did not “recall” giving instructions to deliberately omit climate change from the report. “What I focused this annual threat assessment on, and the IC [intelligence community] focused this threat assessment on, are the most extreme and critical direct threats to our national security,” Gabbard said.

Climate change has fueled mass displacement, economic instability, and violent conflict across the world, which is why the Defense Department has characterized climate change as a “threat multiplier” for years.

Leaving climate change out of this year’s threat assessment aligns with the Trump administration’s broader approach to the issue. Trump has repeatedly referred to climate change as a hoax, and his administration has taken rapid steps to dismantle regulations aimed at reducing planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, hampering the government’s ability to combat climate change.

“[W]e are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion and ushering in America’s Golden Age,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed this month.

Foreign policy