Power Moves: Inside the Deals and Tensions Shaping the World

The Pentagon doors just closed on Senior Colonel Wang Wei and his American counterparts, sealing the first formal session of the US-China Crisis Communications Working Group. In episode one hundred ninety-two, we tracked the room where the global balance of power was redrawn; this morning, that redrawn map met its first hard test inside Washington. Here's the sweep across the wire this hour. In the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran claims naval mines destroyed four commercial tankers and halted two more. That part is claimed, not confirmed, by the Revolutionary Guard. What is confirmed is that American strikes hit an Iranian anti-aircraft installation on Qeshm Island following fire on a US aircraft. Meanwhile, Greenland's parliament in Nuuk voted sixteen to zero, with seven abstentions, to approve a trilateral security pact with Denmark and the United States, cementing new American military base rights across the Arctic.

In Ankara, Turkey's parliament moved to ratify the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, formally tying NATO's second-largest military to Gulf security. And in trade, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney confirmed direct talks with Donald Trump have resumed, with Washington offering concessions on Canadian cultural exemptions. Now look at what actually changed behind closed doors in Washington this week. Tuesday's midterm defeat stripped the White House of its congressional majority. But watch how the foreign capitals are reacting: they aren't treating the administration as sidelined; they're calculating its executive reach. In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced that Russia expects Trump to push forward with Ukraine peace talks regardless of Congress, ahead of trilateral negotiations set for Abu Dhabi on November tenth.

Moscow is making a deliberate distinction between legislative power on Capitol Hill and executive authority in the Oval Office. We see that exact divide playing out on sanctions. On September eighteenth, the Graham Act codified sweeping sanctions and authorized tariffs up to five hundred percent on Russian imports. That law sits on the books. Yet on October sixteenth, the president issued an executive waiver freezing those penalties entirely. The teeth are enacted; the bite is suspended. That executive leverage is why Beijing sent Senior Colonel Wang to meet Xanthi Carras at the Pentagon. Across two days of talks, both sides established practical crisis communication channels ahead of Trump's scheduled trip to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen later this month. Chinese negotiators know congressional pressure against them remains fierce, but the direct military hotline belongs entirely to the commanders in chief.

Foreign policy isn't stalling under divided government—it's shifting squarely into executive decrees, bilateral hotlines, and presidential waivers that bypass Capitol Hill entirely. That's the picture from here. Nadia Sarr, reporting. Back to you in the studio.