The Debate

• Licence to kill? Trump, Hegseth reject war crimes allegations

  When should a soldier disobey an order? The US president and his Pentagon chief are doubling down on operations to sink alleged drug boats without summation in the Caribbean and the Pacific. The pair pushed back on a Washington Post report asserting that back in September, Pete Hegseth's orders led to a follow-up strike on a vessel, killing all remaining survivors. Among the issues are whether the interested parties could face war crimes charges. US War Department footage can make this look like a video game, but there are real human beings assassinated in these images – without trial, without warning. Already the family of one Colombian fisherman killed in September has launched legal action. Are these war crimes? And is this a war? Drug cartels are criminal syndicates, not nation states or insurgencies. On that score, Donald Trump's war on drugs is hard to read. Between pinning the blame on Venezuela's leader and pardoning Honduras's former president, who was actually serving time in the US for cocaine trafficking, what's Washington’s campaign in the Americas really all about? Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Daniel Whittington, Ilayda Habip, Charles Wente.

  --------  

  --------
• Back to the Kremlin: Will Witkoff plan seal Ukraine's fate?

  A peace plan allegedly made in Moscow, a week of furious scrambling to dial it back by Ukraine and its European allies and now it's back to the Kremlin for Donald Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff, flanked only by the US president's son-in-law Jared Kushner and an interpreter. Have negotiations in Florida moved the needle back in Kyiv's favor? How hard – or soft – can the bargaining be? Is Witkoff really Putin's puppet, as suggested last week by French newspaper Libération? Beyond last week's leaks that saw the political novice coaching the Russians on how to handle Trump, can this friend of the US president from his New York real estate days make something of the current White House's "art of the deal" approach to trading war for commercial ventures? Read morePutin accuses Europeans of sabotaging peace efforts ahead of US talks on Ukraine With facts on the ground slowly swinging in Moscow's favour, what's Russia's incentive to compromise when it's pounding critical infrastructure nightly and now claims to have taken the key eastern city of Pokrovsk after an 18-month siege? What say allies, what with Putin talking deals with Washington while serving up fresh threats of war against Europe? Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Juliette Laffont, Ilayda Habip, Charles Wente.

  --------  

  --------
• Nigeria's wave of kidnappings: Why the spike in attacks across the north?

  Why is Nigeria in the throes of a kidnapping epidemic? Sometimes depicted as terrorists, other times as bandits, attackers have targeted three schools inside of a week, leading some to compare the abductions with the 2014 Chibok attacks by the jihadists of Boko Haram. We do our comparison and revisit the same question as a decade ago – why would any human being abduct children; in some cases nursery school children? It's an ordeal for the victims and their families, and bad timing for Africa's most populous nation, what with the Trump administration threatening military intervention over what it calls genocide against Christians. How does the government of Bola Tinubu handle the sudden pressure from the Evangelical right in Washington? Watch moreWhat's behind Nigeria's mass kidnapping and security crisis? More broadly, how to address insecurity in Nigeria, a nation where locals feel abandoned by the state and some instances feel they have to choose between mounting their own vigilante self-defence groups and striking deals to allow their attackers grazing rights for cattle and access to water? The third option is fleeing for good from the impoverished north. But with what consequences? Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Juliette Laffont, Ilayda Habip, Charles Wente.

  --------  

  --------
• Getting ready to fight back? France introduces military service as Russian threat looms

  French President Emmanuel Macron has announced that France is to reintroduce a national military service. Young people will be taken into the military, trained for a period of around a year and paid €800 a month. The programme will be open to all, and voluntary.  Macron made this historic announcement at an army barracks in the Isère region, surrounded by young people already in uniform. The reason for this reintroduction of military service, according to the French president, is clear: the growing threat from Russia. Is Macron's decision a necessary one, or a worrying step towards sending France's youth to fight? Produced by Mark Owen, Rebecca Gnignati, Charles Wente, Ilayda Habip & Jean-Vincent Russo

  --------  

  --------
• Witkoff's art of the deal? Trump aide coaches Kremlin on Ukraine deal response

  The peace plan that read like it had been written by the Kremlin and that called for Ukraine to surrender land, cut back its military and give up any notion of NATO membership was already raising worried eyebrows. Now, in light of a recorded phone call between US envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian presidential advisor Yuri Ushakov, the concern about the closeness of the Trump administration to Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin has hit a new point of alarm. Is this the art of the deal, or a sellout? Produced by Mark Owen, Rebecca Gnignati, Charles Wente, Ilayda Habip & Jean-Vincent Russo

  --------  

  --------

Acerca de The Debate