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Hard Numbers: Japan battles big blaze, Trump firing quashed, Iran’s finance minister sacked, Blue Ghost lands on the moon
A forest fire is spreading in Ofunato City, Iwate Prefecture, northern region of Japanese Archipelago, on March 2, 2025.
30: Japan is battling its largest wildfire in 30 years, a 4,500-acre blaze in the eastern coastal city of Ofunato. One person has reportedly died, and 4,600 residents have been evacuated. The fire follows Japan’s driest February in over two decades.
5: A US District Judge ruled on Saturday that US President Donald Trump’s dismissal of Hampton Dellinger, head of the Office of Special Counsel, was illegal because permitting the termination would grant “a constitutional license to bully officials in the executive branch into doing his will.” Dellinger’s duties include safeguarding federal employees from retaliation for whistleblowing. His five-year term expires in February 2029, but the Justice Department is appealing the decision.
60: Iran’s Economy and Finance Minister Abdolnaser Hemmati was impeached on Sunday over rising inflation and a severely depreciated currency. The rial has slid by 60% in five months under the administration of new President Masoud Pezeshkian, who counted Hemmati as an ally - making his ouster an unwelcome development.
2: Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander on Sunday became the second private spacecraft to land on the Moon, after a similar landing by Intuitive Machines in February 2024. The project is one of several partnerships between NASA and private companies designed to reduce costs and use the moon as a “launch pad” to explore further into space.
As Russia’s war in Ukraine grinds on, the Baltic states—Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania—are watching their eastern neighbor with growing concern. With cyberattacks, undersea sabotage, and military buildup along its border, Latvia is at the forefront of Europe’s efforts to counter Russian aggression. On GZERO World, Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braže joins Ian Bremmer in New York to discuss Ukraine's fate, the region’s security challenges, the role of NATO, and how Trump’s evolving stance on Russia could leave European in the lurch.
Also on the show, Bremmer speaks with former Russian colonel Dmitri Trenin, who offers a starkly different perspective from Moscow, arguing that negotiations over Ukraine should be decided primarily by the US and Russia—not Ukraine or Europe.
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).
President Trump has said that he is not on the Ukrainian side. He's neutral, he's on the side of peace. He's a peacemaker. He just wants to end the war, and that does not mean supporting Ukraine going forward. In fact, because he felt offended by Zelensky, who was not adequately deferential to the American president or the vice president, he said, basically, I'm cutting off support. I am allowing you, by continuing to support you, I'm allowing you to believe you have leverage you don't have. You should accept peace on my terms, and so I'll cut you off and then we'll see how well you can fight.
This is obviously a disaster for Zelensky who was intemperate in my view, in his remarks, absolutely. If you are coming to the United States, and yes, he has expressed thanks to the Americans many, many times on many, many occasions, but he was not well prepared to handle President Trump's ego, which is enormous, which is fragile, and he expects that everyone has to know who's number two and has to stand down when he stands up. And Zelensky did not do that. They ended up talking over each other and Trump got angry, took it personally, and basically threw him out of the White House, canceled the press conference and said, "I'm not supporting you anymore."
I think this relationship is now inexorably broken. I think it's inconceivable that Zelensky will be able to sit down with Trump in the near-term and fix the relationship. Lindsey Graham, who is perhaps Trump's closest confidant among serious senators, said that Zelensky has to either resign or he has to have someone else running point with the United States. I think that's a good read of the situation. Not that I think that Zelensky should resign, but that if you want to engage with the Americans, he's not going to be able to do it himself. Of course, that also happens to be a core demand of Putin, that Zelensky is not the one that engages directly in conversations. Putin won't talk to him, considers him illegitimate. So that's now becoming a talking point that Trump can directly align with, and I suspect he will in the near-term, after already calling for elections in a second phase after a ceasefire. Again, a core Russia demand.
What's going to happen here? Well, first of all, the big question is what are the Europeans going to do? And I use that word intentionally. What are they going to do, not what are they going to say? We all know what they're going to say. They're going to say that they're incredibly supportive of Ukraine, and I saw that from the Poles, and the Germans, and I saw it from the Belgians, and the Dutch, and I saw it from the French, and the Spaniards, I even saw it from Luxembourg, and those expressions of support mean just about as much from Luxembourg as they do from the Germans, unless they stand up and provide far more willingness to give the Ukrainians more financial support for their military, and also provide boots on the ground that are not contingent on a direct American backstop. They have been unwilling to do that for three years, and I suspect they will still be unwilling to do that. And absent that European support and ability to get the Americans back to the table, I think is extremely low. If the Europeans were to take a leadership role and show that they could do it without the Americans or with nominal American participation, then I think it's much more plausible that Trump, irrespective of what just happened with Zelensky, says, "I'm the only one that can get you to the table. I was the only one that made the Europeans lead, and so now, yeah, I'm back, I'm back now because this is the right conditions for peace for the American taxpayers." But of course, what Trump wants to do is end the war, and he now has been given a bigger opportunity to end the war by being able to throw Zelensky under the bus.
And that's what Vance is doing. That's what Elon is doing. That's what all of Trump's supporters on social media are doing. They're saying, "This guy, he's corrupt, he's a dictator, he's a bad guy, he shows no respect to the American president, and why should we support him? Well, the reason you should support him is because he's not a bad guy. It's because he was democratically elected and for three years, he has courageously led his people to defend their country. That's all. To defend their country against an invading force. When the Iraqis invaded Kuwait illegally, the Americans stood up, slapped down Saddam Hussein directly, not indirectly, directly involved in that fighting, to stand for the principle of territorial integrity. And that wasn't even a democracy. That was just a country that yeah, had some oil, but that the United States did not want the rest of the world to think that it would just stand back and stand by while their own country was eaten to shreds by a neighboring more powerful country. That is not where the Americans are today.
Today the Americans are supporting a UN resolution with the Russians, the North Koreans, Belarus, Syria, Sudan, Iran, and Israel, and a few micro states against democracies of the world, saying that territorial integrity is not what's critical. What's critical is just ending the war no matter what. That principle is being thrown out. And the Europeans fundamentally disagree with this. The Europeans feel like there is a gun to their head from the east with the Russians as a direct national security threat, and now a gun to the head from the west, a country that does not support core values of collective security, of rule of law, and of territorial integrity. And that means that the Europeans have to now get their act together immediately or else.
Zelensky is someone who, when the Americans offered to get him out of the country, because he was going to be overrun by the invading Russians, he said, "No, I'm not leaving my country," in a way that the Afghan leadership fled immediately, "No, I'm staying and I'm going to defend my country with my fellow Ukrainians." And that was an extraordinary moment and he has been facing down a much more powerful force, at a threat to his life and his family's lives. He's been on the front lines many, many times. He's not getting much sleep. He's under incredible pressure. And does it all take away from the fact that he talked back to the American president? No, obviously, no. You have to be better capable of representing your country by knowing who you're dealing with when you're coming in to see the US president. But I want to be clear that Zelensky has absolutely nothing to apologize for because the fact is that he is an example of the kind of humanity we need to help ensure that we have peace and stability around the world, someone that will stand up to injustice. And that, from an American president who because he was born of wealth and privilege, faked an injury to avoid military service, I think speaks volumes about what has happened to the United States.
The values that the Americans stand for presently on the global stage are values of power. They are the most powerful, get to write their rules, get to determine the outcomes. And that is true for Putin, it's true for Israel, it's true for the United States, and it's not true for the Ukrainians. It's not true for the Palestinians. It's not true for the Danes, or the Panamanians, or the Mexicans, or the Canadians. And what the Europeans have to now figure out is, are they prepared to be courageous? Are they prepared to step up, even though they're not in the most powerful position? Are they willing to do after three years, after frankly, 11 years since the Russians invaded Ukraine, the first time they've stood back, they've stood by, they haven't stood up for their fellow Europeans. They've allowed the Americans to do the heavy lifting, and now they have a president that is not willing to do that and frankly doesn't agree with them anymore, doesn't agree with their values, doesn't care about shared values, only cares about power.
And so, this is not a question for the Ukrainians. We know where the Ukrainians stand. They stand up. This is not a question for the Americans. We know where the Americans stand. They stand for themselves. This is a question for the Europeans. Are the Europeans willing to stand up for themselves, for their principles, for their values, and for fellow Europeans? And I fear the answer is no. I fear the answer is no. Analytically everything we've seen for the last three years is that they're going to talk a really good game and they're not going to do very much. But we shall see and we shall see very soon because this is the future of the West, this is the future of democracy, and it sure as hell is the future of the Ukrainians.
So that's it for me. I hope you all well and I'll talk to you all real soon.
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The conversation then shifts to Moscow, where Bremmer speaks with former Russian colonel and ex-Carnegie Moscow Center director Dmitri Trenin. Once considered a pro-Western voice, Trenin’s views now align closely with the Kremlin. He argues that the fate of Ukraine should be decided primarily by Russia and the United States—not Ukraine or Europe.
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Is the free world lost without America, or is America lost without the free world? We are looking for your answers today.
It’s a question no one thought about when Donald Trump assumed office just 38 days ago.
Though he promised to be a transformative, “drain the swamp,” America First leader, Trump 2.0 is exponentially more radical and less restrained than his first term as the 45th president.
In less than five weeks, Trump has upended the postwar world order, forcing America’s longtime allies to redraw their maps, literally in the case of the Gulf of Mexico/America and strategically in every other way. It is a new world.
To Trump supporters, he is simply fulfilling his campaign promise of delivering deep change to the “deep state.” After all, with a clean sweep of the presidency, Congress, and the popular vote, he has a genuine mandate — one that is strengthened by a right-leaning majority on the Supreme Court. Cue Elon Musk’s DOGE chain saw.
But let’s pause for a moment and ask what exactly was included in the promise to make America great again:
- Tax cuts? Those are coming as he just won a big victory in the House of Representatives on that.
- Cutting the size of government? Sure. Finding inefficiencies matters.
- Border security and cutting down on illegal immigration? That has already started, and he has support on that too from a wide array of voters.
- Ending the war in Ukraine? Yes. Who would be against that in principle?
But the details of these things matter. You can treat a broken foot by amputating the whole leg with a chain saw, but then you can’t walk. In less than 40 days of mass policy amputations, you might start getting the sense that the treatment is already worse than the disease.
For example, do Republican voters, who wanted a more isolationist foreign policy, really want the US to take over the Gaza Strip? What part of the MAGA agenda saw that one coming?
Do they want to take over Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal too? Imperial land grabs were never part of Trump’s campaign promises.
What about threatening to destroy Canada’s economy in a trade war? Was that part of the promise? Because that’s a lot different from negotiating better trade deals with friends.
Trump is threatening to slap a 25% tariff on all EU goods because he argues, wrongly, that the EU was created in order to “screw the United States.” It was not. The EU was formed out of a desire for stability on a continent that had bled through two world wars. Do Trump supporters really think Russia is a better ally than the European Union?
What about the war in Afghanistan? Do MAGA supporters genuinely want US troops to go back to Afghanistan and take over the Bagram Air Base as the president promised on Wednesday? “We are going to keep Bagram,” he announced. “We are going to keep a small force on Bagram.” A small force? How small? Trump believes Bagram has strategic importance as a forward operating base near China and its nuclear weapons. He also wants to take back the over $7 billion worth of military equipment that the Biden administration left there in 2021. How will he do all this? With another invasion of Afghanistan?
Maybe Republican voters believed Trump would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, but did that include siding with Russia, blaming Ukraine for starting the conflict, and calling President Volodymyr Zelensky, not Vladimir Putin, a dictator?
This past week at the UN, the US sided with Russia, Belarus, and North Korea against a resolution to mark the third anniversary of the Russian invasion. “This war is far more important to Europe than it is to us,” Trump said as he moved the US further away from its longtime allies. “We have a big, beautiful ocean as separation.”
Separation. That is the watchword of the moment. The Trump revolution that is meant to Make America Great Again is making America Alone and for the very first time.
The costs of reversing 80 years of US foreign and domestic policy are still being calculated, but here is one measure: A recent Leger poll found that more than a quarter of Canadians, 27%, now regard the US as the “enemy.” The enemy. Meanwhile, 56% of Americans view Canada as an ally, while only 30% of Canadians see the US as an ally.
These are remarkable pieces of data, especially for countries that fought side by side in Afghanistan, Korea, and two world wars and worked together on countless peacekeeping missions.
To its closest allies, the US is giving away its reputation as the “indispensable nation” and risks becoming an indefensible nation.
Yesterday, Trump announced his new “gold card” idea targeted at “wealthy people” around the world. “We’re going to be putting a price on that card of about $5 million and that’s going to give you green card privileges, plus it’s going to be a route to citizenship," he said. Would he welcome Russian oligarchs to the program? There was no hesitation. “Yeah, possibly,” he said with a smile. “Hey, I know some Russian oligarchs that are very nice people.”
If you can afford the $5 million gold card, you are nice enough for America these days, even if you are a Russian thug.
Russia and China are cheering on this new alignment because it comes at a cheap price. Both are poised to test the limits of a world without US guardrails, a world where there is no global cop on the beat to enforce the rule of law. Watch to see how China moves to expand its influence in the South China Sea, around Japan and the Philippines, and, of course, Taiwan. Russia is already clamoring to digest 20% of Ukraine, with Trump’s blessing. Does anyone think that’s enough to satisfy Putin’s imperialist appetite?
What will this mean for global trade, where US enforcement of secure shipping lanes has been the foundational insurance policy of globalization? It is why you can buy such cheap goods from around the world at places like Costco. That backstopping of sea-lane security is now as up for grabs as the Panama Canal. As Ian Bremmer says, this is now the law of the jungle.
All these are deeply polarizing questions, and coming at such a pace that people may take refuge in the certainty of partisanship to avoid the hard work of answering them.
So I want to ask you for your thoughts. Do you think the US is still a trusted ally to its longtime friends in democracies around the world? Do you consider the US an ally to its fellow NATO members, an enemy, or just neutral?
We would love to hear your thoughts on this. Please email us here.
President Donald Trump faces Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, with President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney at the bottom.
Canadian nationalism is surging as Donald Trump threatens the country with tariffs and annexation through “economic force.” Struggles over free trade and talk about Canada becoming the 51st state aren’t new; in fact, the history of US-Canada trade conflicts and worries about Canadian sovereignty go back more than a century. But this time, things may be different.
To understand the roots of Canadian nationalism and both the parallels and differences between past and present US-Canada battles, GZERO’s David Moscrop spoke with historian Asa McKercher, Steven K. Hudson Research Chair in Canada-US relations at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
David Moscrop: Since Donald Trump started talking about making Canada the 51st state and threatening tariffs, there’s been a surge in Canadian nationalism – as if the country became a nation of flag-wavers overnight. Are there other times in Canadian history when an external force or event has produced a nationalist wave?
Asa McKercher: The previous instances where free trade has been an issue have spurred a lot of this kind of nationalism. The 1911 election, very famously, was about free trade. The Wilfrid Laurier government had signed a free trade agreement with President William Howard Taft, and this led to a huge nationalist panic among Canadians – an anti-American nationalist panic driven by worry that the Laurier government was going to sell us out, that they were annexationists. That wasn’t helped by the fact that the incoming speaker of the House of Representatives, a guy named Champ Clark, made a statement after the treaty passed through Congress but got held up in the Canadian Parliament. He basically said he couldn’t wait for the stars and stripes to fly over British North America. That stirred a lot of nationalist, anti-American sentiment. The Laurier liberals were portrayed as sellouts.
Also, the free trade election of 1988 stirred up a lot of passions. Brian Mulroney and the Conservatives were portrayed as American sellouts. There’s a Liberal attack ad that you’ve probably seen of a Canadian and an American diplomat meeting in a shadowy area, and the American diplomat is scratching out the border between Canada and the United States. Prime Minister John Turner talked about Mulroney becoming governor of the 51st state.
So we’ve seen that kind of nationalism during elections before. What’s interesting about this moment is it’s the pro-free-trade side that is full of nationalism in its wings as opposed to the anti-free-trade side of those other two elections.
Why have we seen that inversion? During the 1980s battle over free trade, the concern among many nationalists was that free trade with the US would be the death of Canadian sovereignty, the death of Canadian culture, the death of Canadian economic prosperity — that Canada’s future depended on resisting free trade. Now, most of the nationalist sentiment seems to be spent on preserving free trade.
We took a bet on free trade. We defended free trade against the thickening of the border after 9/11. We defended free trade in the USMCA negotiations. We made ourselves way more dependent on America. In 1988, the US counted for roughly three-quarters, or more depending on the year, of our trade. But the trade volume in 1988 was $100 billion a year across the border. Now it’s almost a trillion. So the extent of dependence makes that inversion happen. So we had a less continentally reliant economy in 1988, and now our economy is totally reliant on continental trade.
Do you think Trump’s aggressive approach will generate another round of deep Canadian introspection and assessments of what makes the country different from the United States?
I think so. We’re already seeing an uptick in nationalism. But people have also long said we are too focused on America. Take health care, for example. We have big problems in our health care system. Maybe we shouldn’t mimic the American health care system, but maybe we should look at other countries with a social welfare system that might have better health care. But we’re so focused on America as our twin that sometimes we look at them as a focal point for comparison to our peril.
Is the wave of Canadian nationalism we’re seeing deep and stable? Will there be a persistent solidarity there that can carry the country through the tough times that may be ahead? Or do you think it’s superficial — or, worse, a potential source of division?
I mean, we couldn’t wear masks for three years without ripping each other apart — not even three years. So I don’t know what will happen if the tariffs go through … and we see real job losses, we see real industries impacted, particularly on a regional basis, and maybe we see some carve-outs. If autoworkers face a 100% tariff, as Trump is talking about, we could see some real anger in Southern Ontario. But if there are exceptions, where Alberta oil only gets a 10% tariff – which I think would bring it mostly up to market prices, since it gets a subsidized price – people in Ontario might say, “Well, maybe we should put an export tax on that. Maybe we should cut off oil exports.” And that may be the makings of some big challenges to national unity.
I would like to think that this rally-around-the-flag effect is real. I think we’re seeing a reflection of that in the reviving Liberal fortunes in the polls federally. But I don’t know, once the rubber hits the road, once the tariffs actually go through, and once we potentially have hundreds of thousands of people thrown out of work or shifts cut or hours cut back, then yikes, I don’t know what will happen.
But I think the smart leader would be the one who can focus that anger, if it happens, on the external person who’s doing this — it’s a single person who’s doing this — in the White House.
Thinking about that single person and the conflict between Donald Trump and Justin Trudeau, who are not fans of one another, we’ve seen clashes between presidents and prime ministers before: Lyndon Johnson and Lester Pearson, Richard Nixon and Pierre Elliot Trudeau, George W. Bush and Jean Chrétien. Does personal or policy conflict between a prime minister and president generate domestic support for a PM?
Certainly in a few of those cases, yes. If we can remember back to 2003, there were a lot of people rallying behind the Liberals and the Chrétien government. There were also people like Wayne Gretzky, Don Cherry, Ontario Premier Ernie Eves, Stephen Harper, and Stockwell Day who blasted Chrétien for not taking part in the Iraq War, but there were also people rallying to his side. But I would think if we were to look, the corporate media was pretty critical of Chrétien for not reigning in those people calling Bush a moron and such. So, there is a desire to support a prime minister, but not always.
For instance, in the 1960s, Progressive Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker fell out with President John F. Kennedy over nuclear weapons and the Cuban Missile Crisis, but the Liberals won the next election. Why did people vote for the Liberals? Well, there were a number of issues. The Diefenbaker government was pretty out of wind by that point, and the Liberals were talking about dealing with Quebec and social programs, but the Americans pushed Diefenbaker around, and Canadian voters had a favorable view of Kennedy.
What makes this time so different is just how mendacious Donald Trump is. It’s not just the tariff issue. It’s not just the border or the 51st state comment. It’s the belittling, the calling Justin Trudeau “governor” incessantly. It would be one thing if Trump and Trudeau simply disagreed, if Trump said, “Let’s have more defense spending or action to combat fentanyl trafficking.” But the fact that he’s trying to bring about the ruination of our country and talking about annexation — it raises national hackles and makes people excuse the prime minister’s pretty bad handling of a lot of files.
Sometimes we look to history for a precedent or perhaps even a playbook, something we can follow to navigate the moment. Does that exist this time around, or is the Trump threat unprecedented?
We haven’t really faced a hostile American president in over a hundred years. Nixon wanted to impose tariffs, but he withdrew them eventually and actually said, “Isn’t this what you guys wanted?” So, we haven’t really faced a hostile president in a long time, and I think that’s what makes this different. And Trump is also hostile to democratic countries around the world, so we’re not on our own in that sense.
In terms of a playbook, we’ll see if the Team Canada approach works. We’ll see if it works when tariffs go through and we place our own tariffs. And we can lobby members of Congress or the state governors and say, “We’re bringing mutual economic ruination upon us. Can you bring pressure on the White House?” Maybe that will work.
But I’m almost tempted to think we should abandon the Team Canada approach and maybe find, I don’t know, whatever diplomats we have dealing with Saudi Arabia or Turkey, diplomats dealing with authoritarian governments. They might be better situated to deal with a Trump administration if we deal with them on the same level that we deal with authoritarian countries. That may be the playbook we need to dust off instead.
After softening its demands, the US has secured a critical minerals development deal with Ukraine, whose president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is planning to visit Washington on Friday. The US had initially demanded $500 billion in critical minerals for jointly developing critical these resources, and, ostensibly, repaying the country for money sent to Ukraine to aid it in its defense against Russia. Ukraine hopes the deal will ensure future military funding assistance from the US, which has been thrown into doubt since Donald Trump came to office. (Read our explainer on rare earths here.)
Closer to home, as Trump threatens Canada with tariffs, there’s growing concern that the president’s ultimate aim – aside from possibly annexing the country – is gaining control of Canadian critical minerals and rare earths. These resources, which include lithium, cobalt, copper, graphite, and more, are essential to several industries and products, including electric vehicles, cell phones, computers, and military hardware, making them not just essential to the economy, but to national defense, too.
In Canada, concern over critical minerals played a notable part in the Liberal Party’s English-language leadership debate on Tuesday night, as candidates to replace outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spent much of the evening talking about threats from the US. Presumptive frontrunner Mark Carney said Canada ought to leverage its critical minerals to deal with Trump and strengthen the Canadian economy, while Parliament member and Cabinet minister Karina Gould warned that Trump’s focus on Canada was expressly tied to a play for those resources. The growing focus on economic and domestic security in the US means we could be hearing a lot more about critical minerals and rare earths in the weeks and months to come as the president refines his demands from Canada.