What Caught My Eye (no. 30)

Some interesting articles and podcasts that caught my eye this week

Here’s this week’s edition of articles I thought worth reading and sharing. Don’t hesitate to recommend your own reads; I may include some as well.

• Gerry Shih, Shira Rubin, Karen DeYoung and Souad Mekhennet, Israeli intelligence agency balked at Netanyahu’s strike in Qatar, Washington Post, September 12, 2025. A crack investigative team of Post reporters reveals that Mossad had plans to take out Hamas leaders on the ground in Qatar but declined to endorse its execution because it would endanger negotiations that might lead to the release of Israeli hostages.

• David Pierson, Mujib Mashal and Nataliya Vasilyeva, Xi Uses Summit, Parade and History to Flaunt China’s Global Pull, New York Times, August 30, 2025. China used a SCO Summit and the 80th anniversary of the end of world war 2 to stake a claim to the new leader of the world. The presence of the Russian, Iranian, and North Korean leaders suggested that the so-called Axis of Authoritarians was having a very good day. More worrisome was the president of NATO member Turkey’s Prime Minister Racep Erdogan and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

• Naftali Bendavid, Eighty years after WWII’s end, the consensus it forged is crumbling, Washington Post, September 2, 2025. As leaders gathered in China to celebrate the end of Pax Americana (and lay claim to a larger role in ending the war than is warranted), the Post reporter digs deep into how we are witnessing the crumbling of the world the was forged in the war’s aftermath.

• Lindsey Ellis and Aaron Zitner, Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds, Wall Street Journal, September 1, 2025. “America is becoming a nation of economic pessimists.” That is the conclusion of a new poll exclusively reported by the Journal. Where 75% of Americans believed that “people like me have a good chance of improving our standard of living” that number is down to 25% today. “Nearly 70% of people said they believe the American dream—that if you work hard, you will get ahead—no longer holds true or never did.”

• Karen DeYoung and Cate Brown, Gaza postwar plan envisions ‘voluntary’ relocation of entire population, Washington Post, September 2, 2025. An exclusive report digging into plans on the “voluntary” relocation of the Palestinian population in Gaza that are circulating within the Trump administration and elsewhere to turn Trump’s idea of a “Riviera in the Middle East” into a reality. Except that it would mean moving over 2 million people who don’t want to move.

• David Philipps and Matthew Cole, How a Top Secret SEAL Team 6 Mission Into North Korea Fell Apart, New York Times, September 5, 2025. An astonishing scoop reporting how President Trump in 2019 authorized a risky operation by Navy Seals to place listening devices in North Korea. The operation failed, but was never revealed to Congress or anyone else.

• Charlie Campbell, with photos by Moises Samen, Sudan’s Crisis in the Shadows, Time, September 4, 2025. With world attention fixed on the horrors of Ukraine and Gaza, Sudan has become the forgotten crisis. But in terms of human impact and suffering, Sudan towers above all else. This deeply moving photography essay underscores the need for the world to pay attention.

• Nichola Vinocur, How Donald Trump became president of Europe, Politico Europe, September 9, 2025. No US president has shown greater disdain for Europe than Donald Trump — and, yet, he has described himself as the president of Europe. Politico reporter Vinocur argues, with a little tongue in cheek, that he may not be all that wrong.

Finally, in case you missed it here are links to some of the things I did and wrote this week.

• I wrote about the extraordinary breakup between the United States and India after 25 years of unstinting efforts to build a strategic partnership in my bimonthly column for Politico Europe.

• As security guarantees for Ukraine are becoming a core ingredient of any deal to end the war, Europe needs to face up to the fact that it will be alone in providing that guarantee. I suggested how it might do so in a new piece for Foreign Affairs.

• Charlie Kirk’s horrific murder should be a time for quiet reflection on how we got here. Instead, I wrote in The Observer how I fear it will be yet another step towards greater authoritarianism in the United States/

• I was interviewed by Richard Quest on CNN International on the US reaction to the Russian drone strikes.

• My weekly World Review examined Russia’s strikes against Poland, Israel strikes against Qatar, and the US-Japan deal on investments.

Happy reading, watching, and listening!