WorldWatch
Europe
This year was a good time to invest in the German arms industry. Germany’s largest arms manufacturer, Rheinmetall, is opening new factories in Ukraine, Lithuania and Germany, the company said on March 14, to drastically increase production of artillery shells and other munitions. Before the war in Ukraine, Rheinmetall sold about 70,000 shells each year: It wants to sell 1.5 million in 2026. In the last year, the company’s share price almost doubled (“Is the Red Sea Crisis About to Fulfill Bible Prophecy?”).
nato is also benefiting from an influx of investment. Romania began construction in March on the largest nato base in Europe. The base will occupy over 7,000 hectares, the size of a small city, and will have a capacity of 10,000 soldiers and their families. The project will cost around $2.7 billion and will include runways, weapons platforms, military aircraft hangars, schools, shops and a hospital.
Turkey and Greece officially joined the German-led European Sky Shield Initiative on February 15. Established shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it links together Europe’s short-, medium- and long-range missiles to better shoot down enemy planes and missiles. Europe is clearly changing thanks to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: It is militarizing at a rapid clip. Read about this in our Trends article “Why the Trumpet Watches Europe’s Push Toward a Unified Military.”
It is also becoming more right-wing. Fringe-right party Chega dramatically increased its voter support in March 10’s general election in Portugal. Chega, which started in 2019, saw its share of the vote rise from 7.4 percent to 18 percent. Its number of seats rose from 12 in the 230-strong parliament to 48. Now Portugal has only two ways of forming a government: Invite Chega to be a partner, or have a bland, ineffective left-right coalition. Either way, Chega wins.
Meanwhile, if elections were held today, Germany’s nationalistic, far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) would come in second, the Associated Press reported on March 18. The AfD is the top party in the eastern states of Saxony and Thuringia, with about 35 percent support in each. Its appeal to male voters age 24 and younger is particularly high, the report says. Europe’s politics is either paralyzing or shifting right. Watch for this to pave the way for the rise of a strongman. Gerald Flurry’s booklet A Strong German Leader Is Imminent explains.
Middle East
Since Libya’s civil war ended in 2020, the country has been in a near-constant state of political paralysis, with three different governments holding sway in the country. But on March 10, the three rival governments agreed on a framework to form a unified government. Details are limited, but the agreement appears to include the formation of a “technical committee” to iron out divisive issues. The hope is that these small steps will lead to elections, delayed since 2021.
It is not unheard of for countries shaken by oppression or unrest to have warring factions unite, only for the “unity government” to fall apart from infighting, creating an even bigger problem. Libya is still a divided country. If a vote is held and a candidate with enough guns doesn’t like the result, what’s to stop him from starting the war again? The nation’s political crisis will likely be solved with bullets, not ballots.
Daniel 11:40-43 show that in the end time Libya will ally itself with the king of the south, a prophetic name for modern Iran. For this to happen, Libya’s status quo of political paralysis needs to change. The recent talks could herald that change. Read Libya and Ethiopia in Prophecy.
The Wall Street Journal reported March 17 that the West African country of Niger signed a preliminary agreement with Iran on uranium export. Niger was a partner of the West until a military coup last year. The new junta evicted French peacekeepers but let several hundred American troops stick around. The United States caught wind of the Iranian deal and protested. Niger claimed that the U.S. was meddling in its foreign affairs and declared America’s presence “illegal.” The U.S. withdrew on March 16.
According to the World Nuclear Association, as of 2022 Niger was the seventh-largest producer of uranium. That year, Niger recorded roughly 2,430 tons of uranium production, while Iran produced an estimated 24 tons. “While Iran has uranium mines that can supply its current nuclear program,” the Journal wrote, “Tehran has long said it wants to have a much larger industrial-scale civilian nuclear infrastructure. That would require large amounts of uranium, which experts say the country probably lacks. Securing Niger resources could plug that gap.”
Iran’s existing nuclear program is already close to enriching enough uranium for a nuclear bomb. But access to Niger’s uranium could give it enough stock for a much bigger nuclear arsenal.
Since Hamas’s war on Israel started last October, Hamas’s Health Ministry claims that over 30,000 Gazans have died in Israel’s ground invasion. These numbers do not differentiate between combatants and civilians. Israel claims to have killed over 13,000 militants. This would lower Hamas’s “civilian death toll” by nearly half. But Tablet published an analysis on March 7 suggesting many of these numbers are manufactured. From October 26 to November 10, Hamas released what it claimed were daily casualty figures. Tablet graphed the numbers and found the increase was with what it called “almost metronomical linearity.”
“One would expect quite a bit of variation day to day,” Tablet wrote. “In fact, the daily reported casualty count over this period averages 270 plus or minus about 15 percent. This is strikingly little variation. There should be days with twice the average or more and others with half or less.”
Hamas’s numbers cannot be corroborated. Many international commentators take these numbers at face value, but Hamas is almost certainly doctoring its data.
“Much propaganda is circulating regarding Hamas’s attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent war effort,” we wrote in our January Trumpet issue. “Some of it is well meaning but uninformed. But much, if not most, of it is part of a deliberate attempt to hide facts and obscure the roles of both Hamas and Israel.” Tablet’s analysis demonstrates this.
Asia
As Russia’s war on Ukraine continues into its third year, the position of the nation and President Vladimir Putin are strengthening.
In early February, Russia’s air force roared back to life after converting fab-1500 bombs into glide bombs. The 1.5-ton fab-1500 was originally built in Soviet Russia for dead-dropping from airplanes but has now been outfitted with pop-out wings and guidance systems, enabling Russian pilots to strike from dozens of miles away with a reported accuracy of 16 feet. Geostrategist Peter Zeihan on March 12 called it “probably the most significant transformation in Russian military power in the last 30 years.”
On March 11, Putin signed a new budget increasing Russia’s defense spending to 6.8 percent of gross domestic product, up from 4 percent last year, greater than the planned budget for social expenses and a record high for Russia in the modern era. This shows that Putin’s war plans are nowhere near their end.
Six days after signing the landmark budget, Russia’s Central Election Commission announced that Putin won the presidential election with 87 percent of the vote, the highest majority in an election in Russia’s post-Soviet history. Western powers denounced the election since Putin kills or imprisons competitors and journalists, and employs myriad means of censorship, repression and vote manipulation. Yet Putin’s fifth official term as head of Russia, and sixth de facto term, begins on May 7 and extends to May 2030. This enables Putin to surpass Joseph Stalin as the longest-ruling leader of Russia.
After over a year of pessimism about Russia and speculation that Putin would be ousted or Russia would lose its war on Ukraine, the scales seem to be tipping in Russia and Putin’s favor. Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has forecast since 2013 that Putin will survive all opposition and go on to fight far larger wars in the future. To understand the Bible prophecies Mr. Flurry based this forecast on, order your free copy of The Prophesied ‘Prince of Russia.’
Anglo-America
After landslide wins in Georgia, Mississippi and Washington, Donald Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination on March 12, capping off a stunning political comeback that many thought impossible, especially as Democrats attempted to frame him for insurrection and invalidate his candidacy in multiple states. Joe Biden was also nominated on March 12, setting up an apparent Trump-Biden rematch election.
The Supreme Court played a role in the legal fight. The Colorado Supreme Court had attempted to remove Trump from ballots in the state, but the Supreme Court’s 9-0 reversal kept him on it, and Republican primary voters there and across the nation chose him over his nearest rivals by an overwhelming majority of 1,121 delegates.
Daniel 8:10-12 prophesy of a time in the modern age when truth will be cast down. Leftist attempts to frame Trump for insurrection are part of this trend, as are attempts to censor online news articles about problems with the 2020 election and other issues. Newsguard Technologies announced on March 1 that it is now using artificial intelligence algorithms to prevent people from seeing information online that challenges government denials of election fraud.
Some government employees want to go beyond censorship and start abolishing whole branches of government that oppose the leftist agenda. An undercover video released by the O’Keefe Media Group on March 13 shows a Department of Defense employee in the office of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin saying privately that he wants the Second Amendment repealed and enforced by the National Guard, the Senate and the Electoral College abolished, and the border opened further. Such comments show that many leftists are not trying to protect America’s Constitution or borders.
Border Patrol agents have encountered more than 7.2 million illegal aliens at the United States southern border since Joe Biden took office. A fact sheet recently distributed by the White House refers to these immigrants as “newcomers” instead of “illegal immigrants,” and a U.S. Customs and Border Protection document in March revealed that the Biden administration secretly flew 320,000 illegal aliens from foreign airports to 43 airports in the U.S. from January through December 2023. The Biden administration is not only turning a blind eye to illegal immigrants; it is spending taxpayer dollars to fly them into America.
