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Not only had Charles placed Sweden in a calamitous situation internationally but he had left behind him a legacy of domestic troubles. His usurpation of the throne had meant not only the expulsion of a Roman Catholic sovereign whose rule seemed to threaten Sweden’s Lutheranism but also the defeat of the aristocratic constitutionalism of the Council of State, and it had been followed by the execution of five leading members of the high aristocracy.

Charles IX had intervened in Russia to prevent the Poles from placing their own candidate on the Russian throne;

The king observed the spirit of the charter. The aristocracy found in Gustav a king favourable to their interests. He enlisted the nobility in the service of the state and thus provided them with numerous economic benefits.

The first decade of the reign, therefore, saw the creation of the Supreme Court (1614) and the establishment of the Treasury and the Chancery as permanent administrative boards (1618), and by the end of the reign an Admiralty and a War Office had been created—each presided over by one of the great officers of state.

And in the 1620s a thorough reform professionalized local government and placed it securely under the control of the crown. The Council of State became, for the first time, a permanent organ of government able to assume charge of affairs while the king was fighting overseas.

Thus, the fate of Europe was bound up with what happened in Livonia or Prussia. Protestant Europe was slow to appreciate the connection, but as the Protestant cause plunged to disaster in Germany, its leaders increasingly turned their eyes to Gustav as a possible saviour.

The disastrous defeat (1626) of Christian IV of Denmark, who had intervened in Germany without such an assurance, justified his caution, but it also made Swedish intervention inevitable.

Gustav landed in Germany without allies. Whatever the feelings of the Protestant populations, the Protestant princes resented Swedish interference, and the refusal of George William of Brandenburg to cooperate with the Swedes thwarted Gustav’s attempts to save Magdeburg from capture and sack at the hands of Tilly’s armies. In September John George of Saxony, provoked by violations of his neutrality, formally allied himself with Sweden.

the old security had become the new indemnity. Many Germans feared, and some Swedish diplomats now believed, that a final settlement must probably entail the deposition of the German emperor Ferdinand II and the election of Gustav as emperor in his place. It was a solution he must certainly have contemplated, but there is no firm evidence of his attitude; probably he considered it only as a last resort. Certainly it would have alienated those German allies who had no wish to exchange a Habsburg domination for a Swedish one.

His death came at a moment when it had already begun to appear that the victory he believed to be essential to the stability of Germany and the security of Sweden might be more difficult to achieve than he had imagined. But he had lived long enough to deflect the course of German history. His intervention in the Thirty Years’ War, at a moment when the armies of the Habsburg emperor and the German princes of the Catholic League controlled almost the whole of Germany, ensured the survival of German Protestantism against the onslaughts of the Counter-Reformation.

By supporting the German princes against the emperor, Gustav Adolf defeated the attempts of the Habsburgs to make their imperial authority a reality and thus played a part in delaying the emergence of a united Germany until the 19th century.

after his release, he abrogated the Treaty of Madrid (January 1526), in which he had been forced, among other concessions, to abandon his Italian claims. He headed a new anti-Spanish alliance, the Holy League of Cognac (May 1526), which united France with the papacy, Milan, Florence, and Venice.

Spanish military superiority eventually owed its success to the introduction in 1521 of the musket (an improved harquebus) and to the refinement of pike and musket tactics in the years preceding the Battle of Pavia. Such tactics dominated land warfare until the Battle of Rocroi in 1643.

The Papal States were restored, and in 1530 the pope crowned Charles V emperor and king of Italy

Italy remained subject to sporadic French incursions into Savoy in 1536–38 and 1542–44 during a third and fourth Habsburg-Valois war, and Spain’s Italian possessions were increasingly taxed to support Charles’s continual campaigns; however, for the remainder of his reign, Charles’s armies fought the French, the Ottomans, and the Protestant princes outside Italy. Notable for Italy was Charles V’s capture of Tunis in 1535 and his glorious march up the Italian peninsula in 1536 to confirm his personal rule. But the Ottomans formally allied themselves with France against the Habsburgs thereafter, defeated an allied fleet at Prevesa, retook Tunis in 1538, and stepped up their assault on the Venetian empire in the Mediterranean.

Italy became a part of the Spanish Habsburg inheritance of his son, Philip II (ruled 1556–98), and, after the Spanish victory over the French at St. Quentin (1557), the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559) officially confirmed the era of Spanish domination that had existed in Italy since 1530.

On the flip side, the peace faction used the atomic bombings to engage the Emperor in the surrender decision, an unprecedented move within Japan’s dysfunctional form of government, which required unanimous approval to make any decision.

The Emperor instructed Suzuki to muster another Imperial Conference, where, if necessary, he would “command” the cabinet to accept Byrnes’ counteroffer. After listening to Anami, Umezu, and Toyoda’s now familiar arguments for rejecting the Allies terms, Hirohito told his government he wanted the Byrnes offer accepted.

The record of the Imperial Conferences extinguishes any notion that the Japanese government was ready to surrender, that it would have surrendered had the Allies guaranteed the Imperial System, or that it surrendered in response to Russia’s entry into the war. It makes clear two salient facts: that Emperor Hirohito ended the war, and he ended it because of the atomic bomb

On the present trajectory, it will kill, by late April, more Americans than Vietnam. Having earlier promised that casualties could be held near zero, Trump now claims he will have done a “very good job” if the toll is held below 200,000 dead.

The United States is on trajectory to suffer more sickness, more dying, and more economic harm from this virus than any other comparably developed country.

The loss of stockpiled respirators to breakage because the federal government let maintenance contracts lapse in 2018 is Trump’s fault. The failure to store sufficient protective medical gear in the national arsenal is Trump’s fault

That states are bidding against other states for equipment, paying many multiples of the precrisis price for ventilators, is Trump’s fault. Air travelers summoned home and forced to stand for hours in dense airport crowds alongside infected people? That was Trump’s fault too

Trump failed. He is failing. He will continue to fail. And Americans are paying for his failures.

The lying about the coronavirus by hosts on Fox News and conservative talk radio is Trump’s fault: They did it to protect him

The false hope of instant cures and nonexistent vaccines is Trump’s fault, because he told those lies to cover up his failure to act in time.

The severity of the economic crisis is Trump’s fault; things would have been less bad if he had acted faster instead of sending out his chief economic adviser and his son Eric to assure Americans that the first stock-market dips were buying opportunities.

The fact that so many key government jobs were either empty or filled by mediocrities? Trump’s fault. The insertion of Trump’s arrogant and incompetent son-in-law as commander in chief of the national medical supply chain? Trump’s fault.

sooner or later, every president must face a supreme test, a test that cannot be evaded by blather and bluff and bullying.

Ten weeks of insisting that the coronavirus is a harmless flu that would miraculously go away on its own? Trump’s fault again. The refusal of red-state governors to act promptly, the failure to close Florida and Gulf Coast beaches until late March? That fault is more widely shared, but again, responsibility rests with Trump: He could have stopped it, and he did not.

Those lost weeks also put the United States—and thus the world—on the path to an economic collapse steeper than any in recent memory.

It’s a good guess that the unemployment rate had reached 13 percent by April 3. It may peak at 20 percent, perhaps even higher, and threatens to stay at Great Depression–like levels at least into 2021, maybe longer.

This country—buffered by oceans from the epicenter of the global outbreak, in East Asia; blessed with the most advanced medical technology on Earth; endowed with agencies and personnel devoted to responding to pandemics—could have and should have suffered less than nations nearer to China

Through the early weeks of the pandemic, when so much death and suffering could still have been prevented or mitigated, Trump joined passivity to fantasy. In those crucial early days, Trump made two big wagers. He bet that the virus could somehow be prevented from entering the United States by travel restrictions. And he bet that, to the extent that the virus had already entered the United States, it would burn off as the weather warmed.

If Trump truly was so trustingly ignorant as late as January 22, the fault was again his own. The Trump administration had cut U.S. public-health staff operating inside China by two-thirds, from 47 in January 2017 to 14 by 2019, an important reason it found itself dependent on less-accurate information from the World Health Organization. In July 2019, the Trump administration defunded the position that embedded an epidemiologist inside China’s own disease-control administration, again obstructing the flow of information to the United States.

Yet even if Trump did not know what was happening, other Americans did. On January 27, former Vice President Joe Biden sounded the alarm about a global pandemic in an op-ed in USA Today.

Because Trump puts so much emphasis on this point, it’s important to stress that none of this is true. Trump did not close the borders early—in fact, he did not truly close them at all.

Trump’s actions did little to stop the spread of the virus. The ban applied only to foreign nationals who had been in China during the previous 14 days, and included 11 categories of exceptions. Since the restrictions took effect, nearly 40,000 passengers have entered the United States from China, subjected to inconsistent screenings, The New York Times reported.

At a House hearing on February 5, a few days after the restrictions went into effect, Ron Klain—who led the Obama administration’s efforts against the Ebola outbreak—condemned the Trump policy as a “travel Band-Aid, not a travel ban.”

The president’s top priority through February 2020 was to exact retribution from truth-tellers in the impeachment fight.

Intentionally or not, Trump’s campaign of payback against his perceived enemies in the impeachment battle sent a warning to public-health officials: Keep your mouth shut

Throughout the crisis, the top priority of the president, and of everyone who works for the president, has been the protection of his ego

Denial became the unofficial policy of the administration through the month of February, and as a result, that of the administration’s surrogates and propagandists.

That same day, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo scolded a House committee for daring to ask him about the coronavirus. “We agreed that I’d come today to talk about Iran, and the first question today is not about Iran.”

The president’s lies must not be contradicted. And because the president’s lies change constantly, it’s impossible to predict what might contradict him.

During the pandemic, this psychological deformity has mutated into a deadly strategic vulnerability for the United States.

For three-quarters of his presidency, Trump has taken credit for the economic expansion that began under President Barack Obama in 2010. That expansion accelerated in 2014, just in time to deliver real prosperity over the past three years

The harm done by Trump’s own initiatives, and especially his trade wars, was masked by that continued growth.

The economy Trump inherited became his all-purpose answer to his critics. Did he break laws, corrupt the Treasury, appoint cronies, and tell lies? So what? Unemployment was down, the stock market up.

On February 28, very few Americans had heard of an estimated death toll of 35,000 to 40,000, but Trump had heard it. And his answer to that estimate was: “So far, we have lost nobody.” He conceded, “It doesn’t mean we won’t.” But he returned to his happy talk. “We are totally prepared.” And as always, it was the media's fault. “You hear 35 and 40,000 people and we’ve lost nobody and you wonder, the press is in hysteria mode.”

on February 28, it was still not too late to arrange an orderly distribution of medical supplies to the states, not too late to coordinate with U.S. allies, not too late to close the Florida beaches before spring break, not too late to bring passengers home from cruise lines, not too late to ensure that state unemployment-insurance offices were staffed and ready, not too late for local governments to get funds to food banks, not too late to begin social distancing fast and early

Stay-at-home orders could have been put into effect on March 1, not in late March and early April.

So much time had been wasted by the end of February. So many opportunities had been squandered. But even then, the shock could have been limited. Instead, Trump and his inner circle plunged deeper into two weeks of lies and denial, both about the disease and about the economy.

Kudlow repeated his advice that it was a good time to buy stocks on CNBC on March 6 after another bad week for the financial markets. As late as March 9, Trump was still arguing that the coronavirus would be no worse than the seasonal flu.

The overwhelmed president responded by doing what comes most naturally to him at moments of trouble: He shifted the blame to others.

Trump’s instinct to dodge and blame had devastating consequences for Americans. Every governor and mayor who needed the federal government to take action, every science and medical adviser who hoped to prevent Trump from doing something stupid or crazy, had to reckon with Trump’s psychic needs as their single biggest problem.

Governors got the message too. “If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call,” Trump explained at a White House press briefing on March 27. The federal response has been dogged by suspicions of favoritism for political and personal allies of Trump. The District of Columbia has seen its requests denied, while Florida gets everything it asks for.

The Trump administration is allocating some supplies through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but has made the deliberate choice to allow large volumes of crucial supplies to continue to be distributed by commercial firms to their clients. That has left state governments bidding against one another, as if the 1787 Constitution had never been signed, and we have no national government.

Around the world, allies are registering that in an emergency, when it matters most, the United States has utterly failed to lead

s the pandemic kills, as the economic depression tightens its grip, Donald Trump has consistently put his own needs first. Right now, when his only care should be to beat the pandemic, Trump is renegotiating his debts with his bankers and lease payments with Palm Beach County.

He has never tried to be president of the whole United States, but at most 46 percent of it, to the extent that serving even the 46 percent has been consistent with his supreme concerns: stealing, loafing, and whining.

Now he is not even serving the 46 percent. The people most victimized by his lies and fantasies are the people who trusted him, the more conservative Americans who harmed themselves to prove their loyalty to Trump.

Governments often fail. From Pearl Harbor to the financial crisis of 2008, you can itemize a long list of missed warnings and overlooked dangers that cost lives and inflicted hardship. But in the past, Americans could at least expect public spirit and civic concern from their presidents.

Trump has mouthed the slogan “America first,” but he has never acted on it. It has always been “Trump first.” His business first. His excuses first. His pathetic vanity first.

rump has taken millions in payments from the Treasury. He has taken millions in payments from U.S. businesses and foreign governments. He has taken millions in payments from the Republican Party and his own inaugural committee. He has taken so much that does not belong to him, that was unethical and even illegal for him to take. But responsibility? No, he will not take that.

Yet responsibility falls upon Trump, whether he takes it or not. No matter how much he deflects and insults and snivels and whines, this American catastrophe is on his hands and on his head.

“He is surely a rogue and a gangster fond of playing with fire, rather than a politician,” Mr. Kim said.

Mr. Kim’s foreign minister, Ri Yong-ho, who arrived in New York on Wednesday to attend the General Assembly, also called Mr. Trump “a dog barking.”

Asked by reporters in New York what Mr. Kim might have meant by the “highest level of hard-line countermeasure,” Mr. Ri said that only Mr. Kim would know, but that he thought the North might be considering the largest test of a hydrogen bomb ever in the Pacific Ocean, according to the South Korean news agency Yonhap.

“The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea,” he said.

In his United Nations speech on Tuesday, Mr. Trump called North Korea’s autocracy a “band of criminals” and Mr. Kim a “Rocket Man” on “a suicide mission.”

Mr. Trump on Friday responded with some name-calling of his own. On Twitter, the president called Mr. Kim “obviously a madman.”

Although Mr. Kim is often quoted by official North Korean news media, it is highly unusual for him to issue a statement in his name. In North Korea, the supreme leader’s statement carries a weight that surpasses any other formal document.

Mr. Kim, who has been accelerating his country’s development of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles in defiance of the United Nations, Washington and its allies, said Mr. Trump’s remarks had convinced him that “the path I chose is correct and that it is the one I have to follow to the last.”

“Now that Trump has denied the existence of and insulted me and my country in front of the eyes of the world and made the most ferocious declaration of a war in history that he would destroy” North Korea, Mr. Kim said, “we will consider with seriousness exercising of a corresponding, highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history.”

"The coalition calls all honorable Yemeni people to get rid of the Iranian allied militants and end the era of oppression and threats from the militants allied with Iran." The Saudi Press Agency published the reaction.

The truth, I suspect, was simultaneously about as bad as I suspected, and paradoxically anticlimactic. Trump was surrounded by all sorts of odious characters who manipulated him into saying and doing things that ran against the national interest. One of those characters was Putin. In the end, their influence ran up against the limits that the character over whom they had gained influence was a weak, failed president.

Ultimately, whatever value Trump offered to Russia was compromised by his incompetence and limited ability to grasp firm control even of his own government’s foreign policy. It was not just the fabled “deep state” that undermined Trump. Even his own handpicked appointees constantly undermined him, especially on Russia. Whatever leverage Putin had was limited to a single individual, which meant there was nobody Trump could find to run the State Department, National Security Agency, and so on who shared his idiosyncratic Russophilia.

Mueller even testified that this arrangement gave Russia blackmail leverage over Trump. But by the time these facts had passed from the realm of the mysterious to the confirmed, they had become uninteresting.

Shvets told Unger that the KGB cultivated Trump as an American leader, and persuaded him to run his ad attacking American alliances. “The ad was assessed by the active measures directorate as one of the most successful KGB operations at that time,” he said, “It was a big thing — to have three major American newspapers publish KGB soundbites.”

To be clear, while Shvets is a credible source, his testimony isn’t dispositive. There are any number of possible motives for a former Soviet spy turned critic of Russia’s regime to manufacture an indictment of Trump

This is what intelligence experts mean when they describe Trump as a Russian “asset.” It’s not the same as being an agent. An asset is somebody who can be manipulated, as opposed to somebody who is consciously and secretly working on your behalf.

A second reason is that reporter Craig Unger got a former KGB spy to confirm on the record that Russian intelligence had been working Trump for decades. In his new book, “American Kompromat,” Unger interviewed Yuri Shvets, who told him that the KGB manipulated Trump with simple flattery. “In terms of his personality, the guy is not a complicated cookie,” he said, “his most important characteristics being low intellect coupled with hyperinflated vanity. This makes him a dream for an experienced recruiter.”

If I had to guess today, I’d put the odds higher, perhaps over 50 percent. One reason for my higher confidence is that Trump has continued to fuel suspicion by taking anomalously pro-Russian positions. He met with Putin in Helsinki, appearing strangely submissive, and spouted Putin’s propaganda on a number of topics including the ridiculous possibility of a joint Russian-American cybersecurity unit. (Russia, of course, committed the gravest cyber-hack in American history not long ago, making Trump’s idea even more self-defeating in retrospect than it was at the time.) He seemed to go out of his way to alienate American allies and blow up cooperation every time they met during his tenure.

He would either refuse to admit Russian wrongdoing — Trump refused even to concede that the regime poisoned Alexei Navalny — or repeat bizarre snippets of Russian propaganda: NATO was a bad deal for America because Montenegro might launch an attack on Russia; the Soviets had to invade Afghanistan in the 1970s to defend against terrorism. These weren’t talking points he would pick up in his normal routine of watching Fox News and calling Republican sycophants.

there was a reasonable chance — I loosely pegged it at 10 or 20 percent — that the Soviets had planted some of these thoughts, which he had never expressed before the trip, in his head.

Trump returned from Moscow fired up with political ambition. He began the first of a long series of presidential flirtations, which included a flashy trip to New Hampshire. Two months after his Moscow visit, Trump spent almost $100,000 on a series of full-page newspaper ads that published a political manifesto. “An open letter from Donald J. Trump on why America should stop paying to defend countries that can afford to defend themselves,” as Trump labeled it, launched angry populist charges against the allies that benefited from the umbrella of American military protection. “Why are these nations not paying the United States for the human lives and billions of dollars we are losing to protect their interests?”

During the Soviet era, Russian intelligence cast a wide net to gain leverage over influential figures abroad. (The practice continues to this day.) The Russians would lure or entrap not only prominent politicians and cultural leaders, but also people whom they saw as having the potential for gaining prominence in the future. In 1986, Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinin met Trump in New York, flattered him with praise for his building exploits, and invited him to discuss a building in Moscow. Trump visited Moscow in July 1987. He stayed at the National Hotel, in the Lenin Suite, which certainly would have been bugged. There is not much else in the public record to describe his visit, except Trump’s own recollection in The Art of the Deal that Soviet officials were eager for him to build a hotel there. (It never happened.)

In 2018, I became either famous or notorious — depending on your point of view — for writing a story speculating that Russia had secret leverage over Trump

Here is what I wrote in that controversial section:

Earlier this month, Republican commissioners in one Ohio county sought to block the county election board's purchase of new Dominion equipment. A Dominion employee who was forced into hiding due to death threats has sued Giuliani, Powell and the Trump campaign. Another voting systems company, Smartmatic, has also filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News.

Some see these legal fights as another way to take on viral misinformation, one that's already starting to show some results although some journalists are uneasy that a news organization could be targeted.

Skarnulis hopes that in addition to helping Coomer clear his name and return to a normal life, the suits will also serve as a warning.

The number of defamation lawsuits and the large damage claims associated with them is novel, said journalism and public policy professor Bill Adair, head of the journalism program at Duke University.

He does worry that using defamation suits to combat untruths spread by media outlets could become a weapon against journalists just doing their jobs. "As a journalist, I'm a little bit nervous. The idea of using defamation lawsuits makes us a little bit concerned."But even with that discomfort, Adair has come to believe the lawsuits do have a role to play.

The defamation suits already do appear to be having an effect. An anchor for Newsmax walked out on a live interview with My Pillow CEO Lindell when he started making unsubstantiated claims about Dominion voting machines. Fox News, the Fox Business Network and Newsmax also aired segments that contradicted the disinformation their own hosts had amplified.

Last month, Fox Business also cancelled a show hosted by Trump ally Lou Dobbs, who had amplified the conspiracy theories and interviewed Powell and Giuliani about them.

One challenge for the plaintiffs is that defamation lawsuits are difficult to win. They need to show the person they're suing knew a statement was false when she made it, or had serious doubts about its truthfulness.

Media organizations have a First Amendment right to report the news, and that includes repeating what important people say, even if those statements are false, said George Freeman, the former in-house counsel for The New York Times, who now heads the Medial Law Resource Center.

Pro-Trump outlets are likely to claim that constitutional protection for their defense but Freeman believes they may have crossed a legal line in their presentation of election fraud claims and in some instances applauding obvious falsehoods.

Still Freeman said he thinks the strongest defamation cases aren't against the media companies, but against one of the people they gave a lot of airtime to, Rudy Giuliani.

In a January call announcing the lawsuit against Giuliani, Dominion's attorney, Tom Clare, said that the court can consider circumstantial evidence too. The complaint includes a detailed timeline that shows Giuliani continued to make his claims in the face of public assurances from election security experts, hand recounts, and numerous court rulings rejecting fraud cases.

While the current lawsuits could have an impact in this instance, experts on misinformation say there are several reasons why defamation cases aren't a central tool in the fight against falsehoods.

Many conspiracy theories don't target a specific person or company, so there's no one to file a lawsuit against. Legal action is also expensive. Coomer's legal team expects his bills will exceed $2 million. And when a victim does sue, a case can take years.

The parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook shooting have filed multiple defamation lawsuits against Alex Jones of the conspiracy site, InfoWars. But after numerous challenges and delays, the cases are all still in the pre-trial phase. With Dominion and Smartmatic vowing not to settle before they get their day in court, this approach to fighting election misinformation may still be grinding forward even as the country enters the next presidential election. But for Adair and others, any effort to discourage future misinformation campaigns is worth pursuing.

The report did not name any of the 35 world leaders that were allegedly on in the list. However, few months after the initial reports, the German government publicly said it had information that suggested the US might have monitored Merkel's cell phone.

Denmark's independent public service broadcaster, DR, published a report on Sunday saying that the Danish Defense Intelligence Service (FE) had launched an internal investigation in 2014 over whether the NSA used its partnership with FE, and Danish internet cables in and out of Denmark, to spy on senior European officials, according to Reuters.

Merkel on Monday said she agreed with French President Emmanuel Macron's assertion that wiretapping between allies was unacceptable. "Nothing has changed in our stance to the clarification given by the predecessor at the time," Merkel said, referencing the initial claims raised in 2013.

The DR report also found that the NSA spied on Germany's then-foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is now the country's president, and the former German opposition leader Peer Steinbrück, Reuters reported.

DR reported that the intelligence was gathered through an analysis of software known as Xkeyscore, developed by the NSA. Reuters reported that the agency "intercepted both calls, texts and chat messages to and from telephones of officials in the neighbouring countries," citing the DR report.

“We can expect — if efforts are made by both sides — that certain irritants will be removed,” Mr. Lavrov told reporters Tuesday. “This won’t be fast and it won’t be easy.”

Pax Americana is now faced with a dilemma that European empires had to contend with before. Even as it becomes clear that nations should be weaned from foreign hegemony, the transition is almost always messy and sometimes bloody.

Apart from the risk of war, Mr. Trump’s posturing is having another serious consequence. The strength of the United States never relied only on its often-misguided use of military power. American democracy, with all its flaws, was a model, even an ideal, for much of the world. Refugees from tyranny and war continued to see the United States as a haven

This is the true end of Pax Americana, the best of it anyway. The reckless unpicking of military alliances and the betrayal of allies are already bad enough. But there is something even worse afoot. People all over the world still look to the United States as an example. But now it is the enemies of liberal values who view with glee how American leadership is wrecking the very things that Mr. Roosevelt once fought for.

But Marks notes that no amount of reparation payment would have been acceptable to the leaders of the Weimar Republic because such payments were erroneously connected in the mind of the German public with the widespread myth of the “war guilt clause.” As she has reminded us in her earlier work, the word “guilt” does not appear in the notorious Article 231, and virtually identical language was included in the treaties signed with Germany’s allies. Yet the myth of the “war guilt clause” unilaterally imposed on Germany, which was propagated in the early 1920s by Weimar officials and opinion makers, has stood the test of time and continues to find its way into histories of the peace settlement.

On the question of Germany’s capacity to pay, Marks is merciless in dissecting and disproving the various claims of penury. “There are those, not all German, who claim that reparations were unpayable,” she observes. “After 1871, France, with a much smaller economy than Germany’s fifty years later, paid nearly as much in two years (by French estimate) to liberate its territory as the Weimar Republic paid from 1919 to 1932”

In the end, as Stephen A. Schuker has shown, the Weimar Republic actually paid no net reparations at all, discharging its reparation bill with the proceeds from American bank loans and then defaulting on both reparations and foreign debts in the Great Depression.

One way European allies could help in Iraq, he said, was to provide ballistic missile defense systems at bases that house troops from the American-led coalition that has been fighting the Islamic State.

About 200,000 United States forces are stationed abroad, a similar number to when President Trump took office with a promise to conclude the nation’s “endless wars.”

The Pentagon says that the overhaul of African deployments will be followed by one in Latin America and that drawdowns will occur in Iraq and Afghanistan, as it has outlined in recent months.But the killing of General Suleimani, which has sharply exacerbated tensions between Washington and Tehran, could undermine the Pentagon’s plans. Since that killing, it has sent thousands of additional troops to the region to protect against possible strikes from Iran.

But for the 2018 midterm elections, the command took a far more aggressive posture. In addition to sending the teams to allied countries, it sent warning messages to would-be Russian trolls before the vote, in its first offensive operation against Moscow; it then took at least one of those troll farms offline on Election Day and the days afterward.

After getting close to foreign adversaries’ own networks, Cyber Command can then get inside to identify and potentially neutralize attacks on the United States, according to current and former officials.

Cyber Command sends teams of experts overseas to work with partner and allied nations to help them find, identify and remove hostile intrusions on their government or military computer networks.

But Cyber Command officials said those efforts uncovered malware being used by adversarial hacking teams.

For the allied nations, inviting Cyber Command operatives not only helps improve their network defenses but also demonstrates to adversaries that the United States military is working with them. For the United States, the deployments give their experts an early look at tactics that potential adversaries are honing in their own neighborhoods, techniques that could later be used against Americans.

Similarly, Cyber Command officials said their efforts to try to counter foreign threats would not end with the close of voting on Tuesday; they will continue as votes are counted and the Electoral College prepares to meet in December.

“We are not stopping or thinking about our operations slacking off on Nov. 3,” General Moore said. “Defending the election is now a persistent and ongoing campaign for Cyber Command.”

deputy national security adviser

Blinken’s appointment made another longtime Biden aide, Jake Sullivan, the top candidate for his U.S. national security adviser

the United States needs to take an active leadership role in the world, engaging with allies, or see that role filled by countries like China with contrary interests.

People familiar with his management style describe Blinken as a “diplomat’s diplomat,” deliberative and relatively soft-spoken, but well-versed in the nuts and bolts of foreign policy.

On the campaign trail, Blinken was one of Biden’s closest advisers, even on issues that went beyond foreign policy.

That trust is the product of the years Blinken worked alongside Biden as an adviser to his unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign, as national security adviser early in his vice presidency and as the Democratic staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Biden was chair.

Fixing America's standing in the world -- after four years of President Trump fighting our traditional allies and making nice with our longtime enemies -- is absolutely urgent. There's no time to waste.

The primacy of the secretary of state pick is meant to send that message not just to the federal bureaucracy, but, more importantly, to the world community.

Blinken is a striking contrast to Trump's first secretary of state, former Exxon boss Rex Tillerson, who Trump touted as the crown jewel of his Cabinet but who proved ineffective at building relationships within the State Department or with the President.

He, like Klain, has deep roots with Biden. He served as staff director at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Biden chaired it.

And like Klain, he is a longtime Democratic policy hand. Blinken served in the Clinton administration as special assistant to the president and chief foreign policy speechwriter for the president. close dialogSign up for CNN's CNN's Chris Cillizza cuts through the political spin and tells you what you need to know. Please enter above Sign Me UpNo ThanksBy subscribing, you agree to ourprivacy policy.You're on the list for CNN'sCNN's Chris Cillizza cuts through the political spin and tells you what you need to know. close dialog/* effects for .bx-campaign-1219472 *//* custom css .bx-campaign-1219472 *//* custom css from creative 47804 */@-ms-keyframes bx-anim-1219472-spin { from { -ms-transform: rotate(0deg); } to { -ms-transform: rotate(360deg); } } @-moz-keyframes bx-anim-1219472-spin { from { -moz-transform: rotate(0deg); } to { -moz-transform: rotate(360deg); } } @-webkit-keyframes bx-anim-1219472-spin { from { -webkit-transform: rotate(0deg); } to { -webkit-transform: rotate(360deg); } } @keyframes bx-anim-1219472-spin { from { transform: rotate(0deg); } to { transform: rotate(360deg); } }/* rendered styles .bx-campaign-1219472 */.bxc.bx-campaign-1219472.bx-active-step-1 .bx-creative> *:first-child {width: 780px;padding: 15px;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1219472.bx-active-step-1 .bx-creative> *:first-child {width: 400px;}}@media all and (min-width: 737px) and (max-width: 1024px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1219472.bx-active-step-1 .bx-creative> *:first-child {width: 737px;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1219472.bx-active-step-1 .bx-creative:before {min-height: 230px;}.bxc.bx-campaign-1219472.bx-active-step-1 .bx-creative {background-color: #fefefe;border-style: solid;border-color: rgb(213, 213, 213);border-width: 1px 0;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1219472.bx-active-step-1 .bx-creative:before {min-height: 200px;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1219472.bx-active-step-1 .bx-close {width: 20px;stroke: rgb(169, 169, 169);}.bxc.bx-campaign-1219472 .bx-group-1219472-tBtYNNU {width: 100%;padding: 0px;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1219472 .bx-group-1219472-tBtYNNU {padding: 0px;text-align: center;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1219472 .bx-element-1219472-vnxQeDA> *:first-child {font-weight: 700;font-size: 18px;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1219472 .bx-element-1219472-vnxQeDA> *:first-child {font-size: 14px;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1219472 .bx-group-1219472-zNZm3ba {width: auto;height: 100px;}.bxc.bx-campaign-1219472 .bx-element-1219472-bWybe9u {width: 254px;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1219472 .bx-element-1219472-bWybe9u {width: 200px;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1219472 .bx-element-1219472-bWybe9u> *:first-child {height: 100px;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1219472 .bx-group-1219472-9wCndcV {width: 300px;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1219472 .bx-element-1219472-XG1hSFu {padding: 0px 0px 20px;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1219472 .bx-element-1219472-XG1hSFu {width: auto;padding: 0 0 15px;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1219472 .bx-element-1219472-XG1hSFu> *:first-child {font-size: 14px;font-family: CNN,Helvetica Neue,Verdana,Helvetica,Arial,Utkal,sans-serif;font-weight: 400;color: #262626;letter-spacing: 0.01em

The last four years are an aberration. It is not who we will be.Read More .duval-3{width:100%;position: relative; border: 1px solid #979797; border-left: none; border-right: none;padding: 20px 0; box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-box-sizing: border-box; -moz-box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0 0 20px 0; max-width: 660px;} .duval-3 a{color: #1a1a1a; text-decoration: none;font-size: 0;} .duval-3 a:hover { color: #d9d9d9; text-decoration: underline; -moz-text-decoration-color: #d9d9d9; text-decoration-color: #d9d9d9; } .duval-3>a>*{vertical-align: top; display: inline-block;} .duval-3>a>div{display: inline-block; font-size:1.0666667rem;width: 80%; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 2%;} .duval-3>a>img{width: 18%; height: auto;} @media screen and (max-width:640px){ .duval-3>a>*{display:block; margin: auto;} .duval-3>a>div{width: 100%;} .duval-3>a>img{width: 50%;} }

The Blinken pick -- and Biden's decision to name him first among his Cabinet choices -- is best understood, then, as the President-elect doing everything he can to make clear that he will be the exact opposite of the man who preceded him in office.

If Trump ran and governed as the anti-Barack Obama, then Biden is signaling that he will govern as the anti-Trump. And the wheel turns.

But the persistence of the president and loyal Republicans has alarmed Black leaders, civil rights activists and historians who see an unprecedented attempt to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters, many of them Black.

To many civil rights advocates, this is another grim chapter in what they see as an expansive, decades-long effort by Republicans to gain more power by suppressing the votes of people of color.

A group of Michigan voters has also filed a lawsuit against Trump and his campaign, arguing that "defendants are openly seeking to disenfranchise Black voters,"

The plaintiffs, who are represented by lawyers from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, allege that the Trump campaign has attempted mass voter suppression by pressuring election officials into not certifying the election results in their state, and that Trump's apparent attempt to pressure Michigan election officials and state lawmakers was a violation of the provision against voter intimidation included in the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Trump and his allies have made similar efforts in Pennsylvania, with false claims about widespread voter fraud in Philadelphia.

But Bob Bauer, a senior legal adviser to the Biden campaign, said the Trump campaign's "targeting of the African American community is not subtle. It is extraordinary" and that "it's quite remarkable how brazen it is."

"It is difficult for me to think of another president in modern time who has literally driven a national scheme to disenfranchise Black voters and other voters of color en masse, in the way that we see with these post-election lawsuits," said Kristin Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. S

the Trump campaign was aided by supporters and allies across the country in his failed efforts to reverse Biden's victory.

"It's only because of the environment that was created by this president to defy the rule of law, to destroy customs and practices, and to really push people toward a sense of tribalism that's not in our economic interest, that's not in the interest of democracy, for his own selfish and self-reflecting outcome,"

The effort that Trump is undertaking, she said, is a new type of attempted voter suppression in which the president is attempting to invalidate ballots that have already been counted.

"I think he has targeted heavily African American cities because they happen to be heavily Democratic cities, and if he's going to invalidate enough votes to turn the election in his favor, this would actually be the best place to do it," Gillespie said.

voters of color, faced unprecedented obstacles to cast ballots due to the coronavirus pandemic.

With the election challenges serving as a sort of punctuation mark on all of that, Clarke said, "I think this will stand out in the history books as one of the darkest moments in our nation's history."