WorldWatch
Asia
China is closer than ever to becoming a nuclear superpower, and closer than ever to Russia.
Bloomberg reported on February 28 that China is importing tons of Russian uranium for two new fast-neutron nuclear breeder reactors designed to produce enough weapons-grade plutonium for up to 100 nuclear warheads per year.
Russia currently possesses an estimated 5,900 nuclear bombs, while the United States has an estimated 5,300. The Chinese currently have an estimated 400, and intelligence suggests it desires 1,500 to be able to rival the other nuclear superpowers.
The Department of Defense Nuclear Posture Review states, “By the 2030s the United States will, for the first time in its history, face two major nuclear powers as strategic competitors and potential adversaries. This will create new stresses on stability and new challenges for deterrence, assurance, arms control and risk reduction.”
A new foreign-policy document adopted by Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 31 stresses that Russia will work with China and India bilaterally and within multinational organizations to eliminate American dominance in world affairs. China and India have given Russia steady economic and political support, spoiling the U.S. and Europe’s effort to isolate Russia and force it to end its invasion of Ukraine. Russian exports of crude oil are back above prewar levels, with India and China each buying about 1.5 million barrels per day. Before the war, 66 percent of Russian crude oil went to Europe. Now, 90 percent of it goes to China and India.
Meanwhile, Putin hosted Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping in Moscow March 20–23, the first time the two have met in person since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and Xi’s first foreign visit since securing his third term as ruler of China. Putin visited Xi in Beijing in mid-May.
Bible prophecy makes clear that Russia and China are building a super-powerful Asian alliance and will grow more belligerent in their push against the West. Request your free copy of Russia and China in Prophecy.
Middle East
While the world has focused on Israel’s war against Hamas terrorists in Gaza, Iran continues infiltrating the West Bank. Fatah, the faction that controls the Palestinian Authority, accused Iran of destabilizing its rule. “This external interference, particularly by Iran, has no other objective than to sow chaos in the Palestinian internal arena, which will only benefit the Israeli occupation and the enemies of our people,” the April 3 statement read. “We will not allow our sacred cause and the blood of our people to be exploited for suspicious plots that have nothing to do with them.”
According to an April 9 New York Times report, Iran is smuggling antitank missiles, rocket-propelled grenades and other powerful weapons into the West Bank, and experts say Iran is preparing the area to become a new war zone against Israel.
Bible prophecy shows it is the West Bank, rather than Gaza, that will pose the more serious threat to Israel. Zechariah 14:1-2 prophesy that Israel will lose control of East Jerusalem to its enemies. Fatah openly calling out Iran reveals this prophecy is on the way to being fulfilled.
Yemen’s Houthi terrorists announced the “fourth phase of escalation” on May 3. They have been attacking Israel-bound ships in the Red Sea since November and are now also targeting them in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The group has weapons such as the Shahed-136 “suicide drone,” which Russia has deployed against Ukraine, that put the Mediterranean within range and move the conflict closer to Europe.
Daniel 11:40 prophesies that the “king of the south”—radical Islam led by Iran—will push at Europe until Europe launches a massive attack. In addition to the rest of its ongoing terror-based foreign policy, Iran jeopardizing European trade routes is a significant push. And the Houthis may continue escalating to the next phase and beyond. “For this reason alone,” Gerald Flurry wrote in our May-June issue, “this could become the big push of Daniel 11:40. We don’t know yet, but this certainly looks like it could fit that prophetic description in a spectacular way. We need to watch the situation closely.”
Europe
Global military spending reached an all-time high of $2.4 trillion last year, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported on April 22. This marked a year-to-year increase of 6.8 percent, the steepest since 2009.
Much of this spending is by the United States and its nato allies in Europe. The U.S. provides two thirds of the nato budget, and some European leaders like Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, anticipate continued cooperation with the U.S. He met Donald Trump on April 17 when they discussed a proposal for nato countries to spend 3 percent of their gross domestic product on defense. But French President Emmanuel Macron is stridently advocating a different approach and a different goal. “Europe today is mortal—it can die—and it depends on the choices we make now,” Macron warned in a speech at Sorbonne University on April 25. Avoiding this death requires a transformation of European defense. Europe, he said, must stop “delegating our defense to the U.S.” “We must build a Europe capable of showing that it is never the vassal of the United States of America.”
Macron called for European defense industries to work together to better compete with their rivals in the U.S., saying, “We must produce more, we must produce faster, and we must produce as Europeans.” On April 26, Germany’s defense minister, Boris Pistorius, signed what he called a “historic” memorandum of understanding with his French counterpart, which sets out a plan for developing a new Main Ground Combat System to replace German Leopard and French Leclerc tanks. Germany’s Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and France’s Nexter Defense Systems have created the firm knds, which says it “represents the beginning of consolidation in land defense systems industry in Europe” to work on the project. While Germany leads the development of the Main Ground Combat System, France will lead the Future Combat Air System, including Europe’s next-generation fighter jet.
Meanwhile, the German government, which uses weapons manufacturing as a powerful foreign-policy tool, is trying to further boost domestic weapons production. Representatives from 20 defense companies met with German Economics Minister Robert Habeck on March 27 in Berlin for private discussions revolving around “issues of national and European security and defense,” according to Bild.
European nations are also discussing the development of a more powerful nuclear arsenal. Duda, who is presiding over a tremendous expansion of Polish conventional forces, said in an interview published by Fakt on April 22 that his nation is willing to host U.S. nuclear weapons. Here again, Macron advocates a solution independent of the U.S., with nuclear-armed France “ready to contribute more to the defense of Europe,” he said on April 28.
The German government is also working to change the average citizen’s attitude toward the military. On April 25, Germany’s legislature voted to establish an annual Veterans Day, to be held on June 15. On May 15, preliminary celebrations took place in Berlin and throughout Germany. At the same time, attitudes toward the far right in Germany are changing. German teenagers and young adults are increasingly likely to vote for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), according to an April 23 study titled “Youth in Germany 2024.” In the last two years, the younger generation’s support for the AfD has more than doubled. In what might be a related event and a sign of things to come, Matthias Ecke, a top candidate for the German Social Democrats, was attacked in Dresden on May 3. The perpetrators were reportedly far-right extremists. Previously a man who was hanging up posters for the Green Party in the same area was beaten. In the 1930s, political violence spread in Germany as National Socialists suppressed opponents and successfully installed the deadliest German regime to date.
As Europe detaches from the United States, develops its own conventional and nuclear arsenals, and reestablishes its own style of authoritarian leadership, it is reviving the Holy Roman Empire, as prophesied in the Bible.
Anglo-America
The world’s oldest democracy is transforming into a surveillance state. An undercover video from O’Keefe Media Group revealed on May 1 that high-ranking Central Intelligence Agency officials withheld information from Donald Trump while he was in office and are currently spying on him, his team and his ex-wife.
But the government is spying on more than just President Trump. On April 20, Joe Biden signed legislation extending and expanding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The law authorizes warrantless spying on foreigners and on Americans who communicate with foreigners. It now obligates not only tech giants such as Google to facilitate spying, but any service provider with “access to equipment that is being or may be used to transmit or store wire or electronic communications” to assist in spying on ordinary Americans.
As intelligence leaders gain more control over the American people, so too do financial elites. Three of the four largest bank collapses in United States history occurred last year when First Republic Bank ($229 billion), Silicon Valley Bank ($209 billion) and Signature Bank ($118 billion) failed and were bought out or bailed out—and the banking crisis is far from over. Republic First Bank became the first bank failure of the year on April 26 when it was shut down by Pennsylvania’s bank regulator and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. seized its assets. Such failures are opening the door to “centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly,” which is the fifth plank of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto.
Meanwhile, a recent report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York estimates that about 1 in 5 American credit card holders have maxed out their debt limits. This equates to 40 million people. TransUnion reported at the end of last year that the average American’s credit card debt was $6,360. The average American’s savings rate fell to 3.2 percent for the first quarter of the year, and the majority of Americans lack the savings to cover an unexpected expense of even $1,000.
On April 17, the state of Florida passed into law a requirement for public schools to teach age-appropriate lessons about the economic upheavals, losses of personal freedom, dangers and evils of communism.
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the legislation while surrounded by surviving Cuban exiles who attempted to overthrow Fidel Castro, the island’s Communist dictator, in 1961.
